Olwyn Enright (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate. I concur with everything Deputy Twomey said. I would like to concentrate on screening for both breast and cervical cancer, which I have raised on many occasions. The Government parties have provided an unsatisfactory response to date, although I must welcome the Government's belated examination of the issue. I acknowledge the Government has taken a number of steps in the right direction, including the announcement of a new board. However, I question the timing of the announcement and the long delay in addressing this issue. It is time the Government parties paid more than lip service to cancer screening.

The Minister reiterated that the Government is committed to rolling out BreastCheck. I heard the same parties saying they were committed to rolling out the programme before I ever entered politics, and the service is no better than it was years ago. A Fine Gael Minister for Health, Deputy Noonan, initiated the first national cancer strategy in 1996, which, as Deputy Twomey said, the Government parties are working on. If the strategy had been implemented, as envisaged, both BreastCheck and the cervical screening programme would have been rolled out nationwide by now.

Women in my constituency can avail of BreastCheck if they fall within the relevant age categories but women in Deputy McGinley's county cannot do so. My mother-in-law cannot avail of a service to which my mother is entitled. Who in the HSE or the Government decides that one woman in the age category is more entitled to the service than another women elsewhere in the State? I would not like to be the bureaucrat or Minister making such callous decisions to exclude a huge proportion of the female population from the programme.

However, every woman in my constituency is not fortunate in that they cannot avail of the cervical screening programme. Ireland has one of the highest death rates from this cancer in Europe, with 73 deaths per year. Such screening must be made available throughout the State and it must form part of a proper national screening programme. Women are not given the option of a regular smear test unless they pay for it through their general practitioner. While it is a painless procedure, no woman looks forward to it. A national campaign is needed to remind women of the need to undergo this test so that they will make the appointment rather than leave it up to those who can afford it to be tested, which is the position outside the mid-west region. That is totally and utterly unacceptable.

The international agency for cancer research has estimated that an organised programme of national screening for cervical cancer in Ireland would achieve a reduction of 80% in mortality rates. That equates to saving 60 lives per year. I worried when I heard the Minister refer to an affordable model for this programme and she did not spell out what she means by that. The testing element of the programme is not costly but the treatment of those who are found to have the cancer is much more expensive. However, the Government places little value on the 60 lives that could be saved annually when it refers to an affordable model for such a programme, otherwise it would have been rolled out nationwide by now. It is even more frustrating that, while 16 nurses in the midlands have undergone training in this area, they have been waiting for the past two years to participate in the programme and have not been given the authority by the Government to do so.

Reference was made by a number of Government speakers to the importance of diet in cancer prevention. However, I ask them to ask the Minister for Education and Science why schools being built under the PPP programme are being allowed to install Coca-Cola and Mars bar vending machines. Whether the principal wants these machines, the schools are allowed to bring them in. If the Government is serious about this, it needs to engage in joined-up thinking. There is no point in one Minister saying one thing while another puts something entirely different into practice.

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