Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this timely motion. Well done to Sinn Féin for bringing it forward. I acknowledge 100% the priority given to the most urgent cases of cancer during the pandemic and the efforts that were made by the health services throughout the country. At the end of February this year, cancer hit our family. I cannot thank the HSE and all the people in the cancer services enough for what they have done for my family. I thank not only the people who helped our family through this time but also the people who surrounded my family and gave us support to allow me to come here and allow our family to function the way it did previously. They were hard times. People could not get to see their loved ones during treatment because of Covid-19, but the service my family got was second to none, and I thank everyone for that.

My concerns now are the huge waiting lists for colon cancer screening. At the end of February, in terms of non-urgent cases identified, 11,000 people had been waiting for appointments for at least three months. It is a fact that 15,780 people were waiting in August for a colonoscopy. Of that number, 11,780 were waiting for longer than three months. A total of 1,500 of that group were waiting for more than a year. That is outside the emergency group with symptoms that were being seen during the pandemic. What do we say to the 450 cancer patients who would have been diagnosed during the four-month period of the pandemic?

I am calling for a rapid access clinic and diagnostic services to ensure that people are diagnosed as early as possible, particularly in the so-called non-urgent cases. We were one of the lucky ones but there are many people who are waiting for screening and treatment now to help their case.

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