David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our witnesses. I will start by giving a shout out to the Solas cancer support centre in Waterford in my constituency for the great work they do. I visited the centre last year in advance of the budget and the ask then was the same as is being asked now and which is the purpose of the meeting. I was blown away by the range of services provided. It struck me coming away from that visit and having communication with dealing with other centres since then as the national spokesperson for the party that in many ways community cancer support centres are the victims of their own success given where the organisations have now landed. When the organisations were first set up, they were voluntary and charity run. The centres were there to support families and cancer patients, but as time has gone on, the quality of the services, the professional nature of the services and the range of services has increased. We have now got to a point where the political system has to make a decision where we fund that and continue to provide the very high level of services that are provided or we allow them to depend on fundraising, which we know is not sustainable. Mr. Flaherty is right in saying sustainability is the key.

In that vein, I wish to ask about the fundraising side. Every charity organisation is finding it more difficult. Everybody is fishing in the same pond. The Irish Cancer Society was before the committee a number of months ago. There is the national cancer strategy and the lack of funding for it. As we know there is zero additional funding for 2024. Every organisation is trying to fundraise where it can, but if your funding is almost solely dependent on fundraising, it makes it very difficult to plan. Will the witnesses give us some indication as to the levels of money that may have been raised previously where it is more difficult now? This is just to give us a kind of picture as to how difficult it is in that space.