Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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414. To ask the Minister for Health the extent to which the number of incidents of the various forms of cancer has been identified throughout the country, with particular reference to identifying the areas of greater or lesser incidence; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [17269/22]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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The National Cancer Registry Ireland (NCRI) is charged with collecting and classifying information on all cancer cases that occur in Ireland. NCRI data is used widely in the development of cancer services, service planning and in monitoring progress being made under the National Cancer Strategy. While the NCRI produces reports on the incidence of cancer by HSE region, this operates a number of years in arrears as diagnoses need to be validated to assure completeness and accuracy.

The NCRI has currently published information on incidence rates for invasive cancers (excluding non-melanoma skin cancer) as a whole, and for 25 major cancer types, for 1994-2017 at county scale. This data is provided on the NCRI website via maps for each county and cancer type, which provide the average numbers of cases diagnosed annually, and express this visually as a comparison between the number of cases observed and the number of cases that would be expected (based on average national rates) given the size and age/sex breakdown of the population in each county.

For invasive cancers as a whole (excluding non-melanoma skin cancer) in the 2006-2017 period, the annual average number of cases observed was highest in Co. Dublin, while Co. Cork was highest against the Standardised Incidence Ratio.

The data on cancer incidence rates can be found on the NCRI's website at the following link: www.ncri.ie/data/maps and the breakdown of the total number of cases for each county from 2013-2017 is as follows: