Micheál Martin (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)

Balance and perspective are required in discussing this issue, which is very serious. The Government is very committed to continuing investment in cancer care. It has invested very hugely in cancer care in recent years. It invested up to €645 million between 2021 and 2024 alone. New treatments such as CAR T-cell therapy, radio-labelled therapy and specialised radiotherapy are now available in Ireland for the first time. We now have top-class radiation and oncology equipment that we did not have five, six, seven or eight years ago. Let us not brand the entire cancer treatment system as antique. That is not fair.

Cancer survival rates are improving. More people are living after cancer than ever before. Today more than 220,000 people in Ireland who are living with cancer or after cancer. I appreciate the Deputy's own personal experiences and how he has properly articulated them to highlight issues because cancer diagnoses put enormous pressure on individuals and families. However, that 220,000 is 50% higher than the equivalent figure a decade ago. That is a huge transformation. Survival rates have increase progressively over recent years because of the development of national cancer strategies, which have improved screening services. Over the past two decades, our screening has expanded enormously. I refer particularly to BreastCheck, cervical screening and bowel screening. We have hugely increased staffing and there is greater access to diagnostics and survivorship programmes.

The funding will continue. I will not go through all the figures in terms of those who have been recruited. On capital funding, approximately €140 million has been used over the past eight years. We now have state-of-the-art radio-oncology facilities in Galway and Cork. They are not antique but state of the art. We have a new national cervical screening laboratories and various cancer infrastructure, including chemotherapy wards and lab facilities, across the country. That will continue this year with the oncology units at Cavan General Hospital, Tallaght, Kerry University Hospital and the Midland Regional Hospital in Tullamore. There is further chemotherapy infrastructure in Kerry, Cork University Hospital, Letterkenny University Hospital and so on. We will continue to invest.

On the county-by-county breakdown, one of the better developments of the past two decades was the development of proper cancer centres in the major tertiary hospitals, where the bulk of treatment should occur. I am aginm concerned about the proliferation of treatment in private hospitals-----

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