Dr. Michael McCarthy:

I had the direct experience, in the past three to four years we went from having no psycho-oncology team and relying on liaison psychiatry with no special interest, to having now a fairly well-established team as per the model of care for psycho-oncology. If the NCCP was not in control of the funding for that and the strategy for that, if it did not develop the model of care, I wonder where we would be today. Overall, outcomes are improving. One point I would make is that the rate of change, of progress in terms of international research into access to medications and how well they work, is happening very quickly. The HSE is doing great work in many aspects of delivering the care. However, we are being outpaced by the international pace of development of research into anticancer drugs. The other pressure that we struggle with on a daily basis is rising demand on our service.