Brendan Smith: Champions All-Ireland Cancer Research and Care

Thank you very much Caelic and could I just say it's been a very heartening and uplifting meeting and I just want to compliment each of our witnesses you know their their commitment to their patients the commitment to to their profession is so comes across in every utterance that they have made and I wish you well with the very very important work that that you carry out on behalf of our society indeed as was said in your introduction as well unfortunately none of our families have have avoided the the scourge of cancer through deaths and through illness as well so it's it's a subject that's of huge importance to all of us could I all just so just say that your message here to to the committee indeed to the wider public is that politics works and as the the the the existence of the good friday agreement allowed the cooperation to start in the first place with the memorandum of understanding then funding being accessed from the peace plus program and now we have moved on to the shared island initiative that would be crucial I'm sure in support in supporting your work on an all Ireland basis in the in the future could I just also say that mention was made about at the moment but the what the cross border health directive and as we know now is the northern ireland planned health care scheme that replaced the eu cross border health directive that that um that finished when britain left the european union but the same process is in place that's established on an administrative basis at present in the new year there will be legislation going to be legislation going through the iraqtus to put it on a statutory footing and maybe if we if the committee got some some um advice from yourselves in relation to bring in the need to facilitate trials under that particular scheme maybe we could try to advance that on a cross-party basis when the legislation is being discussed in the iraqtus i'm very glad as a non-serving member of the provision of the provision of cancer services on an all-ireland basis on a transatlantic basis and across the european union and as the clear look said hopefully further afield and the whole area of research as well i was a member of government in the mid-2000s when we began a program of rationalization of very um very small cancer services that were in most of our county hospitals at the time and and regional hospitals and there was a huge opposition to the rationalization of those services and it was the right thing to do to go and if services provided where you could have a multi-disciplinary team some of us got a hell of a lot of abuse at that time for backing the proposals to rationalize and to provide a better service in less um hospital settings and and that has has worked and naturally there's room for improvement but alongside that development then we had developments like chemo being delivered in cabin general hospital that we couldn't have had in the past were not for the linkages with with the matter hospital and beaumont and i'm sure that's replicated in other places throughout the country as well and we want to see more of that when it's feasible i just want to say that the fact that in the saint patrick's day meeting between on the Taoiseach and president biden that president biden reference this work and this center now he didn't reference that off the top of his head because everybody would know in the speaking notes that would be prepared for such a meeting they would obviously have gone through his senior personnel the senior health officials as well so that that showed the the how eminent um the eminence he thinks of the of the work that's going on by yourselves on an all ireland basis and transatlantic basis and it's it's very heartening to hear that could i just say when my my first contact with with some of the witnesses who were here today in regard i think maybe this was the idea of having a new building a new stand-alone facility i was delighted to know it wasn't that it was using existing partners not just in research institutes or um universities but you were using the the the hospitals which are an essential part naturally of research and medicine and when we saw this the presentation there it showed how many partners we were able to show what can be done to show what can be done and what is being done on a daily basis to bring about improvements that we all want to see in the whole area of cancer care and could i just say a theme that i took from the meeting here today and from all the contributions of all of you was the patient being at the center and also equity of access in the health care and i think it's it's it's it's it makes common sense it's happening it's progressive that we're working on an all ireland basis that you're working on a transatlantic particularly with the united states and one thing that um maybe professor lawlor would come back upon i think it was in relation to stephen farry's question about collaboration at a european union level now i know that um back years ago when mr david bourbon was the irish eu commissioner and among his responsibilities at that time in the commission was responsibility for health i think he argued very strongly at that time that health the competence of health needed to be an eu competence because um there were so many challenges coming up so much needed to be done that countries couldn't do just having the competence themselves and i think it was mentioned by one of the witnesses earlier about when i can i'm paraphrasing now when there was a global effort to develop a vaccine in relation to covet that that has been successful and we're talking today about a booster vaccine after more than 90 percent of our population has had their second dose so it it that showed the success of science and it showed the importance of the global effort and governments throughout the world and governments throughout the world and governments throughout the world putting the necessary funding into such work as well and to just conclude a cohering i just quote from the initial comments of our witnesses in relation to the vision the vision of the all ireland cancer research institute and i quote we will become a global leader in cancer research and as a result we will give much needed hope to patients with cancer and their families we will give much needed hope to have a very heartening message and hopefully not just those of us in public life but hopefully the the public at large would hear that message as well so good luck with the very important work that you do on behalf of all of us and naturally as the coheerlach said and as my colleague senator ervin mcgreehan said earlier on we want to support you in your work thank you thank you