Geraldine Feeney (Fianna Fail)

I support my colleague, Senator O'Meara, in calling for an early debate on breast cancer. We awoke this morning to the sad news from Australia that a certain lady is suffering from the early stages of cancer. This will highlight the issue of breast cancer, particularly among younger women, which is apt. A timely debate in the House would help in that regard. It is not just middle aged women who are threatened and lose their lives to breast cancer, it also happens to younger women. The whole area of education for younger women should be examined. We need to discuss how they are tested, whether by way of mammogram or MRI scan. Over the last couple of weeks, we learned that MRI scans now appear to be the way to detect breast cancer, particularly among younger women, where mammograms heretofore were not picking up tumours in young and middle aged women.

One of our leading oncologists, Professor John Crown, is currently in Florida. He is one of the people who suggests that the MRI scan is the way to go in detecting breast cancer. This will not be cheap. However, given the number of women who lose their lives to breast cancer in Ireland because it is not detected at an early stage, the MRI scan should be made available not just to women of 55 years of age and over, but to all women from the age of 18 onwards.