Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

I have been asked about satellite centres in places like Letterkenny. The reason for the advice to create a satellite centre in Letterkenny is that we are conscious that Donegal is the most peripheral part of Ireland. If it was not for the political divide on the island we know what the obvious solution would be. We have been in discussion with the authorities in Northern Ireland on providing joined-up services as far as cancer is concerned for patients of the north west. The Government has already secured radiation oncology treatment for patients in Belfast City Hospital, the one centre in Northern Ireland for radiotherapy and one of the best in Europe. Recently the Northern Ireland Minister for Health, Social Services and Public Safety, Mr. McGimpsey, MLA, announced plans for a new centre in Altnagelvin. We hope to be able to join with the Northern Ireland authorities in using that facility for patients from Donegal and, I hope, patients from Sligo. The reason the satellite centre is going into Donegal on an exceptional basis is due to its peripheral location. The centre will be fully integrated with Galway and the staff will rotate from Galway to Donegal. We could not possibly have the staff in Galway rotating to three satellite centres. We all know that it would not be a specialist centre if there were three satellites with staff rotating to three different places.

I do not wish to have an argument about patient numbers because quite honestly it is not just about numbers. We have two sources of data for numbers. One is the HIPE data, which is the patient information and inquiry system. That is the method we use to pay hospitals. Those data are compiled at hospital level as patients are discharged. They are verified and collated by the ESRI. The other source of data is the cancer registry, which provides data on cancer patients on a county by county basis. Those are two authoritative sources of data based on people who have had breast surgery procedures in Mayo General Hospital for the year in question — 2006, when there were 43 procedures. A total of 77 women from Mayo got breast cancer and 43% of them were treated in either Dublin or Galway.

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