Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

To repeat again, I remain a strong fan of a unified service. I will give the figures for the cancer plan because it is so important. Our outcomes in Ireland — 18th out of 23 countries in Europe — are very bad. It is important that we put in place the appropriate services for cancer patients, but that did not happen. We saw what happened in the midlands when there was a piece of the action for every hospital in the region and we could not get multidisciplinary expert care.

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