Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

Funding of €27.4 billion, as the Deputy knows, has been allocated to the health service for 2026, an increase of 6.2%. Next year a new approach is being taken to funding allocation with health budgets being devolved to the HSE regions, giving them greater autonomy to meet local needs while holding them accountable for ambitious targets and national standards.

The National Cancer Control Programme will continue to lead on service design nationally and implementation of the national cancer strategy. The programme also monitors performance and works closely with the regions to ensure the delivery of safe effective cancer services, continuing to work towards the delivery of multi-annual budgets in health over the coming years. Capital investment already operates multi-annually and it is a priority for me to introduce this across all areas of the budget.

Since its launch in 2017, the Government has allocated €105 million to the national cancer strategy itself to support cancer services and improve outcomes for patients. That, of course, is not the totality of funding for people who have cancer but to the cancer strategy itself. Since then, very significant progress has been made in improving cancer services and there are now over 220,000 living with or beyond cancer, 50% more than a decade ago.

One in two people is expected to receive a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime.

We are seeing tremendous advances in cancer care and I am committed to ensuring that patients can take advantage of these developments.

Work will begin shortly on an evaluation of the cancer strategy, which will inform the development of a new strategy next year. The budgetary situation is that the letter of determination has been sent, which will indicate very clearly, as the Deputy outlined, that there is inequality of access to diagnostics and treatment within the different regions. It is a priority to try to achieve better equality. In the service plan, we will see the specifics of trying to acknowledge and achieve that in a better way.

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