Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis na Daonlathaithe Sóisialta as ucht an rún seo a chur os comhair na Dála agus deis a thabhairt dúinn, mar Theachtaí, páirt a ghlacadh sa díospóireacht. I welcome the motion. It is a very basic and modest motion. It calls for the abolition of the €80 inpatient car parking charge, for a stop to be put to the abominable practice of using debt collectors and for a follow-up in respect of the commitment in the programme for Government to introduce a cap on car parking charges. I note that the Minister of State is nodding. She has been put in the position in which she finds herself because the senior Minister is absent. I might come back in a moment and comment on why he is in Dubai and on the privatisation of the health service and the marketisation of it and of medicinal products. If I have an opportunity, I will come back to that matter.

It is interesting that what this motion highlights is the inequity in our health system, and not just, unfortunately, for people who are suffering from cancer. As with all Deputies, I have somebody in my mind who is very close to me and is suffering from cancer. I am also thinking of a member of my family who died. All of this is irrelevant because, in a sense, all of us could offer similar anecdotes. The reason we have a national cancer strategy is to avoid that. All the inequities have been highlighted repeatedly. That is what Sláintecare was about. The board was established to deliver a health service that was fit for service. I emphasise that I am using the word "service". I am not referring to a product or a company, but a health service to serve everybody equally, because that is what we deserve as human beings and citizens.

It is significant that we are doing this debate today, especially as this Friday, 4 February, is World Cancer Day, which is an annual event led by the Union for International Cancer Control, of which the National Cancer Control Programme and the Irish Cancer Society are members. Objective No. 23 of the national cancer care strategy, which is underfunded and which is not being implemented properly, is to "Reduce inequalities in five year survival for: - all cancers combined ...". The cancers are then listed out. The target for the objective is to have no greater than a 3% difference in the survival rate between those who are most seriously disadvantage in society and those are not, thereby reducing the distinction in survival rates. I will not use the word "deprived" because I do not like it.

In 2019 and 2020, the official position was that survival is 11.4% lower in among disadvantaged communities and patients than it is among those who are not disadvantaged. We could use this benchmark for everything that we talk about in terms of health. It was already mentioned by Deputy Gino Kenny in the context of the geographical differences throughout the country and survival rates. I come from Galway, which is supposedly a city that has a hospital that is a centre of excellence, where somebody very close to me could not get an MRI scan even though they had stage 4 cancer.

I will not go on, because I would not be able to. I will stick to the issue, namely, that this motion focuses and puts a spotlight on the much bigger issue that we are commodifying and making products of our health system. The senior Minister is off in Dubai at an expo, where, I understand, the difficulty is that companies are upset because they do not have enough three access to the HSE in the context of selling their products. The Minister should be at home here talking about the importance of universal healthcare service for all, including patients who have cancer that we all know about, and not off in Dubai. It is simply unacceptable. We have been through all of this and the criticisms and limitations of health service before. That is why we brought in Sláintecare. Deputy Shortall did a great job as chairperson, as did the relevant committee, in producing the action plan. They did so in order that we could avoid these type of excuses for debates in which we share anecdotes about who has suffered in our families. It is important to share those stories; I am not belittling it at all. However, we should be beyond that in terms of strategy and implementation of it. That is why the Minister should be here to be held to account.

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