Donna McGettigan (Clare, Sinn Fein)

I thank the witnesses for coming in. At the beginning of the discussion they talked about patients. I will talk about another patient. His journey started over five years ago. He had pancreatitis at the time. He started to get really yellow and lost a drastic amount of weight. He could not eat. He could not sleep because he was constantly itching. He had been sent to different hospitals. There were delays in endoscopes and appointments. Hospitals kept sending him home. He was extremely thin and should never have been sent home. One doctor said there were signs of cancer, but a doctor in a different hospital said no, there is not. When the witnesses spoke earlier about electronic health records, something like that probably could have helped him. His family and friends could all see something was seriously wrong and there seemed to be some sort of cancer eating this man up. He was sent home from hospital once again but eventually was brought up to Dublin, had an operation and was told that he had stage four cancer and had six months to live. That man was my husband. He passed away four years ago because of this. There was no accountability there for us as a family. Nobody has answered our questions as to why this has happened. I am sure this is replicated around the country. He is not the only one to have suffered this.

In terms of my colleague, Deputy Cullinane, saying earlier that there seems to be no funding in the 2026 budget, what do the witnesses think the new strategy can do if no new funding is made available, if they do not know where new funding is coming from or if there will ever be any new funding? What do the witnesses think could be put in the new strategy that could help these kinds of cases?