Catherine Ardagh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I met a gentleman recently who described how he is fighting for access to the drug, Spinraza, for his 15 year old daughter who suffers from spinal muscular atrophy. She is now at a stage where she finds simple tasks like getting up, going to the bathroom or brushing her hair very difficult. Spinraza is available in 20 other countries and anecdotally we have learned that Ireland has been offered this drug at a very competitive price. The Department of Health says that it will cost €20 million over five years which is a very small amount given the benefits of this drug. Spinraza will not cure the young girl to whom I referred but it will massively improve her quality of life and €20 million is a small price to pay for such an improvement. I ask the Minister for Health to ensure that the HSE reaches a deal with the suppliers of Spinraza to ensure that children who need this drug have access to it.

The second issue I raise today relates to the recently published report from the National Cancer Registry Ireland. It found that cancer rates in Ireland could double over the next 25 years. While cancer detection has improved and people are living a lot longer, it is frightening to think that cancer rates could increase by 50% in the years ahead. As I said recently, almost every family in Ireland has been touched by cancer. It does not discriminate on the basis of wealth or skin colour. Unfortunately, it could hit any one of us and over the next few decades one in every two people in this country could be visited by cancer.

In 1996, Fianna Fáil introduced the first cancer strategy which was very successful. There have been superb improvements in clinical outcomes but increases in the number of people diagnosed with cancer have led to delays in accessing chemotherapy. In the past, when patients were diagnosed with cancer they started chemotherapy the very next day. My own father suffered from cancer for 15 years. He had several hundred blood transfusions and battled cancer successfully six times. Each time he was diagnosed, he began chemotherapy the following day.Other members of my family have also been visited by cancer. The waiting lists for chemotherapy, whether one is a public or private patient, mean that if one is diagnosed on a Monday, one may not be slotted in to start chemotherapy until three or four weeks later. From my experience, I have seen that the time it takes to access cancer treatments has increased massively. Whereas people used to get treatment the next day, they now wait a few weeks before being scheduled for chemotherapy. We have a cancer strategy for the period from 2017 to 2026, which is very welcome, but in light of these figures it is really important that we ensure there is enough capital investment in, and Government support for, that strategy. We are following this cancer strategy but we need to look at it again. We need to revisit the issue of cancer care in Ireland. We were once one of the best performers in this area but we are slipping. People should not have to wait for chemotherapy. The waiting lists for patients to be scheduled for chemotherapy should be much shorter than they are. The statistics with which we have been presented today demonstrate that this will become an even greater problem.