Liam Twomey (Wexford, Fine Gael)

I will say that it was at variance with the truth.

That is what is happening, and a recent report from the Irish College of General Practitioners — and the Irish Cancer Society in case the Minister of State thinks there is a vested interest — showed that 41% of public patients wait more than 12 weeks for a colonoscopy, which is what the patient known as Rosie required. In her case, it was delayed significantly, and she was handed down a death sentence from bowel cancer. When I hear Deputy Fiona O'Malley or the Minister tell the House that patients are being seen within three months, I recognise it as a misstatement of the truth trotted out by Government representatives. That is why they have lost people's trust. They have deliberately tried to mislead them, and that is the sort of misleading information that they supply daily.

The Minister of State is part of a Government that will soon have been in power for a decade without having any strategy for the cancer services for which he is responsible. Those services are being run in accordance with a cancer strategy written in 1996. The strategy that the Government published last year awaits an implementation report that will not come until next year. They will have had a decade in power with no direct input into policy on cancer services.

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