Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There is something very special about the East Galway and Midlands Cancer Support centre in Ballinasloe, which I visited last week. The last time before that I had visited was during Covid.

It is a place where you instantly feel at ease. You go in the back door and it is like going into your own home. The first thing you see is the kitchen table and the kettle. It is a very welcoming and homely place and that is the very immediate sense you get when you walk in the door. You can tell instantly from those who are part of the centre whom I have met, particularly Jackie, Brian and Anna, how important what they do is to them.

The cancer centre is a section 39 organisation. It is a non-profit charitable community cancer support centre and it supports and provides much-needed services and supports to cancer patients and their families. There are between 120 and 130 people going through the centre every week for various supports and services. The centre serves, but is not limited to, the counties of Galway, Roscommon, Clare, Longford, Offaly, Tipperary, Westmeath and Dublin. They serve eight counties, yet they are in a grave situation as regards their funding.

It costs the managers of the centre between €13,000 and €15,000 monthly just to keep the lights on to provide what they are providing - just to stand still. Does the Minister of State know how much funding they receive from the State? They receive €7,000 a year. That comes to approximately €134 a week. That is barely a euro for every person who they see and support, the people who depend on them, in a week.

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This is not good enough. We have a state-of-the-art centre perfectly located in Ballinasloe that provides counselling sessions, treatments, therapies, fitness classes, and transport to cancer treatment, all of which is free of charge. In 2023, the centre provided 1,096 hours of treatments and 942 counselling sessions. It is struggling financially. It has two paid staff members; everyone else volunteers. The centre cannot say enough about those volunteers who give of their time. I also commend them on the work they do in supporting so many people in what is usually the most desperate, difficult and challenging time in their lives. The centre is heavily dependent and reliant on local fund-raising and the goodwill of the community. Again, that community and I commend those who fund-raise and donate. They are the people who keep the doors open. Of course, this is not sustainable. That is not good enough, given the supports and critical services they are providing. This cancer centre is seeing 130 people every week and serves eight counties. I know from the people who volunteer and work in it that they do not limit themselves by geography. They turn nobody away. They deserve an awful lot more than €7,000 a year.

I ask the Minister of State to ask the Minister for Health to meet with East Galway and Midlands Cancer Support representatives, and for the Minister to get the HSE to engage with the centre on the funding it needs to keep its doors open to support the many people and families they support, and to keep it functioning at the highest level. It wants to do more but it is very much hamstrung by what it has. The centre has also made an ask regarding the HSE directly taking on the salaries of the two staff members who are there so it does not have to come out of the fund-raising or the €7,000. More importantly, we need to fund the service and sustain it into the future for those who rely on it today and, unfortunately, for the many who will rely on it into the future.

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