Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the Minister's indication that he is looking into the possibility of a major campaign. Oncologists are frustrated. Everybody understands why the blockages have appeared in the system as they have, but there appears to be a disconnect between the public narrative that cancer care services are operating as normal and what the oncologists and, more importantly, their patients are experiencing. There are a lot of delays. It would be fantastic if the Minister could look into that.

On the turnaround time for testing in nursing homes, it is great that NPHET is looking at a paper on retesting. The turnaround time in hospital settings is 24 hours more or less. If a patient or member of staff is tested, the result is available within 24 hours. In the nursing homes at the moment, the waiting time is regularly five or six days and sometimes more than a week. I raised this directly with the HSE yesterday and was told that its target is to bring down the waiting time to three days by the middle of this month. The target should be one day. That is the target in the acute hospitals so that if there is an outbreak, it is identified and people can be isolated, contacts can be traced and there is no big knock-on effect on patients and staff. The nursing homes have exactly the same need. One of the reasons the HSE gave for the longer waiting time for nursing homes is that the ambulance crews need to go out, but the homes have trained clinical staff and can take the swabs themselves. Will the Minister push the HSE on this and put it to NPHET that the target for nursing homes should be not three days but 24 hours as it is for the acute sector?

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