Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

I am not in a position to give that date at the moment but I will try to come back to the Deputy as soon as I can. Very few countries have introduced lung cancer screening because of the uncertainty around its effectiveness. That does not mean we should not explore it. As the Deputy has done, I want to commend the pilot programme that has been introduced, instituting a community-based lung health check programme by inviting individuals from north Dublin and the north-east region identified as being at high risk of lung problems to attend for mobile screening, for breath tests and for low-dose CT scans. I have met a number of people who were not high risk who have developed lung cancer. They run marathons and do not smoke, and yet they have lung cancer. As the Deputy has said, in those cases diagnosis often happens at a considerably more advanced stage, which is obviously exceptionally problematic. How do we best capture that group? How do we screen in that group? Under Europe's Beating Cancer plan, in 2022 the recommendation was for further expansion of cervical, breast and bowel cancer screening, and feasibility studies on gastric, prostate and lung cancers. We have to get that balance right around effectiveness. I am so glad to have the opportunity to discuss it in the Dáil today with the Deputy.

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