Olwyn Enright (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)

I wish to share time with Deputy Creighton.

I have listened to some interesting comments in this debate but it is wrong to suggest the women of Ireland were late in voicing their needs. They have been doing so for a considerable period but the Government has been late in meeting their needs. The issue of screening has been characterised by a remarkable lack of urgency in all cancer specialties, whether breast or cervical cancer or other cancers affecting men and women. While progress has been made in rolling out the BreastCheck programme, I understand the service is not universally available.

I concur with Deputy O'Rourke on the need to address the issue of women aged over 65 years. I note the Minister and her officials are nodding and hope progress will be made on this matter.

The purpose of today's statements is to discuss cervical cancer services. The roll-out of services in this area has been remarkably slow. We have heard accurate statistics on cervical cancer and Deputies largely agree on what is the current position in this area. Figures show between 170 and 240 new cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed and upwards of 73 women die from the condition annually. When Deputy Michael Noonan was Minister for Health one of the priorities in the national cancer strategy launched in 1996 was to establish a national screening service for cervical cancer. When one extrapolates from the figures I cited, one finds that the lives of approximately 900 women could have been saved if the service had been introduced 12 years ago. This is an important statistic, particularly given that the families of the women who died from this disease are probably still grieving.

While I welcome the Minister's commitment to roll out a national cervical cancer screening service, we have heard such commitments previously. I hope in this case it will be met. Since being elected to the House six years ago, I and other Deputies have repeatedly raised the need to provide cervical cancer screening. A service is not available to the majority of women in the constituency of Laois-Offaly, which I share with the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children, Deputy John Moloney. I look forward to a nationwide service being rolled out without delay.

I ask the Minister to elaborate on whether a vaccine will be made available. Judging by her choice of language, it appears she will make a positive decision and provide the vaccine. I hope that is the case. The Minister will probably agree that vaccinating young people against cervical cancer will be difficult given the need for parental involvement. Notwithstanding this, it would be a worthwhile initiative and I hope progress will be made in this matter. The Minister mentioned that she has the HIQA report. When the vaccine was rolled out in the UK, the head of cancer research there said that it was an exciting step towards preventing cancer. Taken in conjunction with screening, it will be an exciting step here and I look forward to it happening.

I am not expert on pathology, but I have listened to the debate on the issue. The Minister for Health and Children was previously the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment. In my own time as spokesperson on education, I became aware of the difficulty in building an ethos for research and science in Ireland. The service needs support from that basis. There are excellent accredited labs in Ireland. The Minister for Finance spoke about the decision in value for money terms. Nobody in Fine Gael will say that value for money is not important, but we must also look at long-term value, and not just value for money in one particular contract. Training people to be qualified pathologists, developing that service around the country but then effectively pulling the rug from under them has a long-term cost which weakens the value for money argument.

From both positive and negative publicity, women are very aware of breast cancer and the need for self-checking, screening and so on. People are a little bit less aware of the need for vigilance about cervical cancer. The All Ireland Cancer Foundation currently has a road show travelling around the country and a website, www.tellher.ie, which is a good idea. While I do not normally call for advertising campaigns as we waste money on a lot of them, if we can have an advertising campaign for Transport 21, then we can have a campaign to make people aware of the need for vigilance in this area and the need for screening.

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