Mr. Neil Guckian:

With regard to radiotherapy, I assure the committee that all patients from the South of Ireland will get the utmost clinical support. There is absolutely no two-tier service. As chief executive of the trust, I can categorically state that. All feedback we have received confirms that in terms of clinical outcomes and clinical support. We have overcome a lot of the early teething problems about information flowing across the Border and all the various challenges that presents, but I can assure the committee that all evaluations have come out showing identical outcomes for both categories of patients.

In regard to the south-west acute hospital, I have to confirm that we do not have the traction in terms of the cross-Border linkages between south-west acute hospital and Sligo hospital. That is an area of great regret for me as chief executive of the Western Trust. The challenge for all chief executives of smaller hospitals is to sustain those hospitals into the longer term, in particular their acute status. I would be very keen to engage with Sligo hospital and others to try to see where we can help each other in terms of the long-term sustaining of services. It is a great regret that it has not taken off over the last decade.

In terms of new centres of excellence, I can assure the committee that the cancer centre in Altnagelvin is a centre of excellence, and one that we should all be extremely proud of for the island of Ireland. There are other centres of excellence throughout the Western Trust and, indeed, for the Saolta Group in Sligo, Letterkenny and Galway. We should be extremely proud of our health and social care services in the area.

CAWT has played its part. We would not have a cancer centre today if it was not for CAWT, and the population of the north west of Ireland has really benefited from that development. As the people responsible for delivering the service, we are aware that we would not have that without the Government, the GPs and the medical people of Donegal, but also through CAWT. I think we have a lot to be proud of, although there are a lot of challenges ahead.