David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

One of the benefits of having health regions is that we can have this type of focus, we can drill into the data and we can have real accountability. There are regional imbalances, county imbalances and very localised imbalances. The cancer strategy is a national strategy. We have specialist centres. I want this to be maintained, of course. It is really important. Where the areas of chemotherapy and radiotherapy are a problem, and where we are slipping, we have to fix the problem. From what I can see, part of this is due to equipment being out of date and not having staff to operate some equipment. I have tabled parliamentary questions on this and gone through it in detail. In some places the problem is that we do not have the staff to operate equipment, and somewhere else equipment is not being used because it is out of date, breaking down and needs to be replaced. We have these issues. Surgery is where I think the Minister's own attention is very important. We are seeing slippage in prostate cancer surgeries and breast cancer surgeries. Again, there may well be regional variations but the focus needs to be on where it is slipping and where we are not doing as well. The health regions can add real value from this perspective.

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