During the general election campaign I asked an elderly woman in a rural area if I could speak to her daughter. She told me that I could not as her daughter was in bed, suffering from cancer. She asked me to try to get radiotherapy facilities in the area. Those women did not have a car, yet she had to travel to Dublin for treatment. Having to travel 150 miles in an ambulance while already suffering from cancer is poor from a palliative perspective; in many cases it can exacerbate the cancer. A woman with five young children living five miles from the regional hospital told me that she found it a terrible nuisance to have to travel to St. Luke's when she lived so close to the regional hospital.