Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

As usual, I thank Sinn Féin for this motion. I cannot understand why the Government has tabled an amendment because what this motion seeks are very basic things based on the national cancer strategy. For the life of me, I cannot understand how the Government can stand over such an amendment.

I speak here today in the context of Galway, where a brand-new scanner sits unused and where, in the accident and emergency services today there were 60 patients on trolleys, some of them in the ED, making it impossible for the staff there to do their work. Hidden away in the wards we had 11 patients. Last week, we had 72 in UHG, and on another day in the same week we had 71. Just over a year ago, when HIQA staff visited Galway, they were aghast at the overcrowding when there were just 20-something on trolleys. I am not sure what words they will have now to describe 61 and 71 on trolleys in Galway. Of course, treatment for cancer and diagnoses are impacted by the state of the hospital, what is happening in the hospital and its overcrowding. At any given time when HIQA was there last year, there were something like 24 patients who could not be discharged because they had nowhere to go.

In the meantime, Clifden hospital is closed, with respite beds and step-down facilities closed and beds closed in the middle of the Gaeltacht, croílár na Gaeltachta, in Áras Mhic Dara and in Merlin Park. For God's sake, how could we have respite beds and step-down beds and a hospital closing in the west where the hospital is under such problems?

When an options appraisal was carried out, we were told that 64% and 94% of the infrastructure in the hospital in Galway and Merlin Park, respectively, was categorised as requiring a total rebuild or a major upgrade to function properly. Rather than looking at a brand-new hospital, we go higgledy-piggledy on a congested site, putting up more and more structures instead of long-term planning on Merlin Park's side.

Be that as it may, we are here now with the cancer care strategy and with all those extraneous variables affecting the strategy. We are on our third strategy. The two previous strategies led to some improvement. Now we are in the unprecedented situation where the Irish Cancer Society is telling us that the strategy is not being implemented and 22 doctors and professors have put their names to a letter. It is unprecedented. The only other time I saw that was when doctors put their names to a service in Galway. I forget the name of it. It related to breaking bones and so on. It was unprecedented. Here we are then, with the third national strategy, and in the seven years it has been in being, it has been funded properly only twice. The implementation and the monitoring of the implementation are at best vague. The professor who did one of the forewords, Professor M. John Kennedy, stated that the recommendations of the strategy were to be reviewed towards the end of 2021. I do not see where that has happened. What was that for? It was "to ensure that our aims and direction are appropriate to deliver optimum outcomes for patients".

I do not have time to outline the letter of the 22 doctors and consultants. It states that screening has not been implemented, targeted waiting times are not being met and so on - bullet point after bullet point. Back in Galway, there is a 30% shortage in radiation therapists - they are all exiting the service - and a machine lying vacant.

Then we have the Parliamentary Budget Office very kindly outlining this strategy. It tells us, which is incredible, that only limited disaggregated data is available. It states that the lack of data makes it difficult to examine the overall national level of spending on cancer care or to link investment in cancer care services with performances or outcomes. It, therefore, cannot analyse what the performances or the outcomes are as regards the funding going in.

I will stop in a couple of seconds but I stand here in absolute exasperation, in a wealthy republic, that this is the state of our health service year after year, notwithstanding that there was a cross-party agreement on a committee that showed the way forward. We are talking about sovereign funds and investing in sovereign funds when we should invest in our health services.

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