Mr. John Conroy:

What is important for us here is that the voice of the client is heard in all of this. We are here to advocate for funding for our centres, and we are providing the supports for the client. They are central to everything we do. If the committee does not mind, I just want to read out a couple of testimonials with regard to clients coming to our centres because I think it is important that their stories are heard:

My cancer diagnosis affected every aspect of my life. My work, my physicality, my home-life, my plans.

[...]

Ironically, I coped much better with the physical changes than the mental and emotional ones. The biggest loss was any sense of control. I had to let go

[...]

During my chemotherapy, I become so unwell in every sense. I was so weak from the drugs that I went to my Oncologist after the fourth round and told her I simply couldn't go on. I wanted to quit, not something I do easily. She immediately suggest counselling at ARC for both myself and my husband. I don't know why I hadn't thought of it myself, maybe because I thought this was for other people, preferring to cope privately but miserably failing.

Through several sessions I was given the tools to cope, to separate myself from what the drugs were doing, to rationalise that this wasn't me, but the drugs affecting me. My husband also got counselling, finding a place where he could express himself openly and feel very safe in doing so.

That is from a client who was engaging in services with ARC cancer support centres in Dublin. A client of my own centre states:

I have been attending Dóchas Offaly Cancer Support over the last 19 years in various capacities. I was a volunteer for a long time with Dóchas and loved my time as a volunteer. I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer in 2005, and Metastatic Breast Cancer in 2016.

For me personally, Dóchas Offaly Cancer Support Group has always been a lifeline, somewhere I could speak openly and honestly about my condition, my hopes and my fears as my disease progressed. I appreciate the treatments I receive; they make me feel better like nothing else can as I struggle to manage the deterioration in my own health as my cancer progresses.

Nobody else can understand how it feels to be in this position as much as John, the service manager, and his dedicated staff can. Facing the hospital visits, the scans, the agonising wait for results and then dealing with the prognosis is not something we can manage alone no matter how kind and loving those close to us are.

Dóchas is carrying me through, they immeasurably improve the quality of my life through the terrifying progression of my Cancer. The emotional support I receive in Dóchas, is just as important to me as the drugs I’m on to extend my life.

However, it frustrates me to see ... [John] swamped in applications for grant funding, spending many hours fighting to keep Dóchas’ doors open to provide the very invaluable support to which I refer to, to a lot more people like me. Dóchas is one of the smaller centres in Ireland and John has a huge remit. To see the work he puts in to ensure people in a similar situation to me receive the supports I do is frustrating knowing that such a caring, compassionate and empathetic [team] should be afforded more time to be present with the clients.

My quality of life is made bearable through the specific and invaluable psycho-social supports offered by Cancer Support Centres, and in my opinion it is a regrettable misuse of ... time that John and ... [other centres] have to repeatedly be taken away from providing that care in order to fundraise and apply for grants to maintain an open doorway ...

My personal wish is that this would change, that Government would recognise how valuable the service is that Dóchas [and all other cancer support centres throughout the country] provides and that funding would be made available to ease the stress of running a Cancer Support Centre and allow ... [all managers] to concentrate 100% on making all our Cancer journeys more manageable.

That is from one of our clients in Dóchas Offaly Cancer Support Group. It is important to bring it back to why we are doing this. We are doing it for the client. That is why we are here today.