Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. I know this is a challenging area and it has been even more difficult during Covid-19. I thank the witnesses for the care and assistance they gave to every person who came under their care.

I want to deal with Dr. Russell's presentation and about the increase in referrals to colposcopy in year two. Regarding the capacity to deal with increased referrals, will we have a sufficient number of people with the expertise to deal with it? Will we have the facilities in our hospitals to deal with that increase? How is that being planned out? When does the start of year two begin? Is it now or in three- or six-months' time? Perhaps we might get some clarification on that.

The other issue is about additional oncology nurses being available during Covid-19. With regard to a roll-out of increased level of services, do we have a sufficient number of nurses with oncology qualifications and expertise? Do we need to further increase the number of people in that area so we can continue to improve the service?

It is also important that while there has very much been a focus over the last few years on CervicalCheck and the difficulties that have arisen from it, none of the presentations today has set out the improvements that have occurred since CervicalCheck started. Perhaps it would be helpful if we got some figures on the reduction regarding the number of people who died as a result of cervical cancer and information about what improvements have occurred over the past five to eight years in that area. The witnesses might give us some figures on that.