Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

As I said, last year there was a 75% increase in staff resources. That investment was to support implementation of the Health Service Executive national cancer control programme. It was for screening and acute services but men, in particular, and Deputy Kenny has been talking to some cancer consultants, are slower to come forward for screening programmes. It is only through active screening programmes for prostate cancer that we will have success in the fight against prostate cancer. That is the reason we invested those resources.

This report covers the period from 1994 to 2001 but as a society we invested €1 billion in cancer services nationally in the past few years. That is a significant level of resources and it has been invested substantially in all regions to improve cancer survival rates.

Deputy Kenny mentioned Sligo. He will be aware that some of the best consultants are located in the west and operate from a Galway base. Many of them trained abroad but now work in the west because that is from where they hail. One hundred additional consultants have been appointed in the key areas of medical oncology, radiology, palliative care, histopathology and haematology. If the Government can complete the contract with the hospital consultants, we will move quickly to employ several hundred more consultants, including in the area of the national cancer services. We have employed 245 clinical nurse specialists who have also been appointed in the cancer services area. Nearly 94,000 inpatients and day patients were discharged from hospitals following a diagnosis of cancer, an increase of nearly 70% on the figure ten years ago.

I regret that people continue to die from cancer, including friends of Deputy Kenny, but there has been an enormous improvement in the cancer services that have been rolled out — over 70% in terms of patients discharged compared to the number of patients discharged in 1997. This year we set up the National Cancer Screening Service Board. That amalgamates BreastCheck, which was established by the then Minister for Health, Deputy Martin, in 1998 and the Irish cervical screening programme, both of which are now part of the national screening programme. Both BreastCheck and the national cancer screening programme are being rolled out nationally this year.

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