Marc MacSharry (Fianna Fail)

No, I am not emotional. I am purely detailing the facts. The Chair should not confuse conviction, determination and enthusiasm with emotion because they are different.

The outcomes which have been achieved in the regional hospital in Sligo over the period since the introduction of medical oncology, triple assessment and multidisciplinary teams — including pathologists, radio-oncologists, oncologists and radiotherapists, who meet each Tuesday — when benchmarked against what the best in the world has to offer, namely, the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results, SEER, database in the United States, of which I know the Minister is aware, are at least as good as in the United States. In fact, when age is taken into consideration, the outcomes are better.

How can we knowingly ignore this? It does not add up and is not logical. We all fully support the aim of best outcomes, which is the gold standard when it comes to cancer care, but nobody will engage on this issue. The HSE persists, and when Professor Keane met our party, he conceded that the data was out of——