Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Last week I raised with the Tánaiste the deliberate decision by the Government, and it was deliberate, to deny adequate funding to cancer services and the cancer strategy. Today's debate offers an opportunity again to put the facts on the table. The Government has failed miserably to properly fund the cancer strategy in five of the past seven years. The HSE sought €20 million to improve cancer services for this year but did not receive a red cent from the Government in the recent budget. We know that expensive and life-saving equipment funded by the taxpayers is lying idle and unused in hospitals as a result of staff shortages brought on by the Government. Radiation therapy, as we all know in the House, is crucial to shrink tumours and ultimately remove cancerous cells but we have heard there are machine closures in our hospitals throughout the State due to staff shortages. For example, in Cork University Hospital a linear accelerator and a CT scanner have never been used. They have been sitting idle for three years. It is an absolute scandal. It is happening on the watch of the Government.

Yesterday 21 leading cancer doctors and researchers wrote to the Taoiseach. Among them was one from my county, Dr. Lukasz Milewski, who is a consultant medical oncologist at Letterkenny University Hospital in Donegal. The warnings by this doctor and others cannot be brushed aside by the Government. They warn that cancer screening has not been expanded as planned. They warn the targeted waiting times for cancer are not being met. They warn that cancer surgeries are frequently delayed due to shortages in staffing beds and theatre space. Yet there was not a red cent from the Government, or any one of the Ministers who sat at the Cabinet table, to provide funding to the national cancer strategy in each the past two years. What does this tell us? It tells us the Government is completely failing people on health, particularly those who have cancer. It is an indictment of the Government.

The long and the short of it is that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael cannot be trusted with our health system. The evidence of this is to be found in every community. Over the past 13 years Deputy Varadkar, the Taoiseach and the Minister, Deputy Donnelly have been our Ministers for Health. Their record is high waiting times, hospital overcrowding and underfunding of critical cancer services. There is an alternative, which is to provide proper and multiannual funding for our cancer strategy to improve outcomes for patients, to end the recruitment embargo and to fund the 3,000 additional beds in our hospitals and communities that are so desperately needed. This is what Sinn Féin in government would do. It is what Deputy Cullinane has brought before the Dáil. It is what every Member should support. They should turn their backs on the Government, which has failed desperately the people who are relying on a proper health service. It has driven it into the ground over the past 13 years. It has deliberately decided not to fund cancer services. It is allowing equipment to lie idle. It is a shame and a scandal and it needs to end now.

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