Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

Unfortunately, cancer remains one of the top three killers in this country and, given the figures Senator Quinn recounted, it appears it will remain so for some time. What is the most important thing to consider in cancer care? It is the quality of the care the patient receives, the environment and atmosphere in which that care is delivered, and whether the staff are tense or can genuinely offer care. There is also the ethos in which the care takes place and the quality of outcome.

For these reasons, I support the amendments of Fine Gael and the Labour Party and compliment Senator Fitzgerald and the Labour Party team on tabling them. This gives us a chance to think about the matter. In 1990, my father was in St. Luke's. Thank God he is still alive and very well but he was a difficult man to convince he needed treatment. He had surgery and subsequent treatment but I could not believe I was in a hospital. This man came and went whenever he wanted and spent more time at the bookie's shop than in the hospital. The staff knew how to manage him. After having major surgery he came and went as he pleased but they were able to manage him. He got exceptional care, thank God, and here I stand 20 years later, speaking of a man who is fit and well, aged 80 years of age.

In 1990 I saw St Luke's had developed into a specialist centre for cancer care long before that term was ever known in this country and I know the same from friends and relatives and thousands of e-mails we have received since. It developed through experience and throughput, namely, the very reasons we want the centres of excellence. Most important, it is because of patient feedback that we know it developed into a centre of excellence. As my colleagues, including Senator Quinn, stated, we must listen to the patient. I believe it will be time to close St. Luke's only when we receive as much positive feedback from patients regarding the new centres. They are only in transition, learning how to manage, and in many respects are lost at present.

I refer to the situation in Galway which greatly saddens me because I live there. It is my constituency and University College Hospital, Galway is my local hospital. Senator Fitzgerald read into the record and Senator Feeney referred to the letter from Kay Coburn. I am shocked and devastated to think that our designated centre in Galway is not yet a centre of excellence. It is so in name but is very much in transition and only learning how to cope. One can consider a few basic matters. I have spoken to people in the centre such as Professor Kerin who told me that dedicated beds were needed in one place. What is a centre, after all, but a dedicated place to which one can go and know it is for the care of the cancer patient? If that dedicated centre exists, why admit patients through accident and emergency departments? Why would Kay Coburn's lovely sister have to spend 25 hours in the emergency department? We do not yet have that centre.

Senator Feeney asked, rightly, why Galway does not have a centre with two, three or four beds instead of having the beds spread throughout the hospital, in geriatric and other wards where patients are at risk of cross-infection. The answer is a policy decision by the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney. When responding on this matter on "Today with Pat Kenny", Dr. David O'Keeffe said it was because of the moratorium. How can there be beds in a single place when the hospital has neither the beds in the first instance nor the staff to service them?

It is only some months since I spoke in this House about the scandal concerning cancer drugs in UCHG, our centre of excellence. A sum of €12 million that had been promised for cancer drugs was not given to the hospital. Did the patients get the drugs? They did but only because the money came from 100 hip operations and elective surgeries that were cancelled and from the gynaecological ward. We are living on a shoestring in this country but there is St. Luke's Hospital, working it out and doing so for generations.

I support what other speakers have said. I ask the Minister of State to confirm that the year in question is 2014 because that would give us four years to think about how to turn St. Luke's into a satellite centre of St. James's Hospital, as others recommended. Let us not consider closing it until there are centres of excellence in practice and reality throughout the country and not only in policy. The Government's policies are not working. There is a contradiction here, with St. Luke's about to close and UCHG struggling without the necessary resources.