Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 13 March 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

National Cancer Strategy: Discussion

Dr. Jerome Coffey:

I will do my best to make sure it does not happen.

On radiation services in Galway, enabling work is under way. Construction is to start this year. A design team is examining the extension of the radiation centre in Beaumont Hospital. This is all happening and there are no delays or re-profiling in that regard.

The third question was on the cancer registry. I am on the board of NCRI. There was a considerable volume of work in the second half of last year, and continuing this year, to implement as quickly as possible nine recommendations from the report. A data-sharing agreement between the HSE and the registry is in place. There are a number of big issues that the Deputy mentioned, including having one source of data or one data repository. There are discussions on how best to do that rather than having multiple sources overlapping or contradicting each other. That is an absolute priority of the registry and the HSE.