Joanne Collins (Sinn Fein)

I welcome the Minister of State. I welcome the opportunity to speak on the motion. I thank my colleagues in the Independent Group for tabling this important motion forward, and especially Senator Craughwell for his heartfelt and to the point graphic, but needed, speech. It is great to hear the lived experience. I also welcome all those in the Gallery.

The motion highlights what too many patients and family already know, which is that cancer services in the State are in crisis. The focus today is on head and neck cancers, in particular, the lack of pre-radiation dental oncology and rehabilitation supports, but, in truth, these are symptoms of a much deeper systemic failure to deliver timely, equitable and safe cancer care right across the board.

The national cancer strategy was launched with ambition in 2017, yet eight years on it has only been properly funded for two of those years. Of the 23 objectives it set out, one has been achieved.We have a workforce crisis in cancer care. Radiation therapists, radiographers and oncologists are stretched to breaking point. Up to 70 of the 240 radiation therapy posts nationally are vacant. Life-saving equipment sits idle while professionals burn out or emigrate because of low pay and poor progression. These shortages are not felt evenly. The postcode lottery in cancer care remains stark. Patients in the west, south and north west are still travelling hundreds of kilometres for diagnosis or treatment. Centralisation has a place for specialist services, but it cannot become an excuse for the permanent neglect of regional capacity.

The human cost of this neglect is devastating. For every four-week delay in starting treatment, the risk of death increases by 9%. These are not abstract numbers. They represent people who could have a better chance - mothers, fathers, sons, daughters - but whose lives are being cut short because our system is moving too slowly. This is happening at a time when public patients are being outsourced for private treatment, which is a far greater cost to the taxpayer. That is not efficiency; it is failure and we are paying twice for it.

Sinn Féin fully supports the motion, but we also need to state clearly that the issue raised here today is not confined to dental oncology. It cuts across the entire cancer system from screening and diagnostics to surgery and radiotherapy and recovery. We need a cancer service that is comprehensive, equitable and properly funded. We need to end the recruitment embargoes that are paralysing care. We need multiannual funding and planning so that services can recruit, train and retain the staff they so badly need. We need to invest in regional capacity so that no patient is left behind because of where they live.

This is about dignity. Delays in treatment or rehabilitation are not statistics; they are life and death for patients and their families. The Government must stop treating cancer services as an annual budget line and start treating them as a national priority. Sinn Féin will continue to press for a fully funded, regionally balanced and patient-centred cancer strategy, one that delivers for every community and not just those within the M50.