Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

I thank the Deputy for his comments. A number of issues are involved. I understand that Belfast will have spare capacity for approximately 100 or so patients a year. Some 500 new cancer cases occur in County Donegal annually and approximately half of those, some 250 people, require radiotherapy. They are the furthest from either Dublin or Galway. Therefore, they were the priority in terms of seeking access for up to 100 of them to appropriate radiotherapy in what will be the best facility on this island next March with eight linear accelerators and a huge complement of staff. In Northern Ireland it was decided to have one single centre. Deputy Ó Caoláin's colleague, the Minister, Bairbre de Brún, was responsible for centralisation to get critical mass and provide a really good facility. The people in the North will have the best facility on this island when the centre there is opened in March.

In time, the centre in St. James's Hospital and our other centres, as they develop, will also be of that standard. I hope the centres in St. James's and Beaumont hospitals will be the larger centres. This provision is about being realistic and pragmatic. When the centre in Beaumont Hospital is completed, it will be much more convenient with the new road network to patients from counties Cavan, Monaghan and Louth.

Access to services for patients in County Donegal was and is the priority. However, I hope this experiment works well and I heard what the Deputy said about introducing more such initiatives. If it were not for partition, political instability and violence, health services on the island would be very different for the northern part of this island. There is no doubt about that. There are many initiatives we want to explore together. This one is a start and I hope that is the case. I hope we can do more. It may well be that further capacity could be installed in Belfast to facilitate the treatment of other patients, but for the moment access to these services is being provided for patients in County Donegal. We hope shortly to be able to pin down the political agreement that was made with the appropriate protocol in order that the treatment can begin as soon as possible.

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