David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Sometimes you have to own your own failures. I am looking at the countermotion from the Government. Not only does the Government not own its own failures, but in a breathtaking and very arrogant and deliberate way, it actually misrepresents what has been said by all those healthcare professionals who have come out very strongly with regard to the lack of funding for the national cancer strategy and, indeed, the Irish Cancer Society.

In its countermotion, the Government states that there has been an "improvement in survival rates in Ireland during the current National Cancer Strategy 2017-2026." The most recent data that was published was in 2019. That data is relevant to the previous strategies and not the current one. The Government talks about the 670 new staff that have been employed since the strategy was put in place in 2017, and that is correct. That came from the additional funding that was provided in those two years in 2021 and 2022. That shows what can be done, and those staff have made a real difference. Then, however, the Government chose not to fund the national cancer strategy in all the other years.

The Government talks about improvements in new treatments and new medicines and cancer therapies for patients and yet what it does not acknowledge are the very low access rates to new medicines when we compare it to other European countries. It talks about the development of new infrastructure for cancer since 2017. Of course, what it does not talk about is that in St. Luke's Radiation Oncology Network, we have one linear accelerator, which is closed, and a skin cancer machine that is only working part-time. In University Hospital Cork, we have a linear accelerator and CT scanner that have never been used. A new scanner has arrived in Galway but that still has not been used. All this equipment is lying idle under the Government's watch.

The Government talks about staffing and additional recruitment in areas. It talks about every specialty except, of course, the ones relevant to this debate, namely, radiotherapy therapists, radiation therapists and radiographers. We have a dire shortage. The Minister of State said he brought a proposal to the Minister. It is not just a proposal we need. We need funding. We need those areas to be funded and then delivered.

The fact is that we have had 13 years of Simon Harris, Leo Varadkar and Stephen Donnelly as Ministers for Health. They have made the health service worse. We see it every single day with people waiting in hospital corridors and on hospital trolleys, massive overcrowding and, as we know, cancellation of hospital appointments, including cancer procedures, because of the Government's failure to deal with overcrowding. Cancer services are not being properly funded, including in 2024. Expensive lifesaving equipment is lying idle. Cancer surgeries are being cancelled. Therefore, the solutions we are were putting forward to the Minister of State are to fund the national cancer strategy on a multi-annual basis; end the recruitment embargo, train more healthcare professionals and bring them home to have them work in the health service to ensure that we have the radiation therapists and radiographers we need to bring about improved outcomes for cancer patients; and fund the 3,000 beds we are asking the Government to fund - 1,800 hospital beds and 1,200 community beds - to really deal with the capacity problems in our hospitals. We need a Minister for Health who will stand up for people and stand up for cancer patients, children with scoliosis and those patients who are waiting far too long in emergency departments. After 14 years of three failed Ministers for Health, we need a change of direction.

Sinn Féin has a plan to deliver better health services. I, for one, cannot wait for the Minister of State's party to have the guts to go to the people. Let us have a general election. Let us have that battle of ideas. I hope that at the end of that, we will have a Government that will put cancer patients and people first because they deserve much better.

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