Deputy Mary Lou McDonald- speech from 14 Jan 2026

Taoiseach, I want to raise with you a very alarming and a very distressing case. It's the case of a woman from the west of Ireland, left to wait six weeks to start her chemotherapy. At the end of November last, this mother of two young children received the devastating news that she had breast cancer, the same cancer that her own mother had died of in her 40s. To get a diagnosis of cancer is traumatic enough, but to be told that you have the same cancer that took the life of your own mother is really terrifying. However, she didn't give in to fear. She was up for the fight and she expected that the health system would have her back. She was referred to University Hospital Galway for chemotherapy and expected to commence her treatment with the urgency required. But as she waited, the days rolled into weeks. Christmas came and went and still no appointment. The stress and the anxiety of having cancer, worrying about it growing and spreading, but not being treated got worse for her day by day. Her husband says that they began, to use his words, begging for chemo. She even offered to travel to other hospitals, but her wait continued. By the second week of January, this woman was still waiting for her chemotherapy appointment. Then she presented at the A&E in significant pain. She was left, by the way, to wait on a trolley. Only after being admitted to hospital did she begin her chemotherapy, and it is very shocking that it is only after she was admitted to hospital that she started treatment. Otherwise, she would have still been left waiting. Taoiseach, no cancer patient, no family should ever have to go through what this woman and her family went through. We all know that early treatment is vital when it comes to surviving cancer. The National Cancer Strategy states that the treatment should start within 15 days of diagnosis. But the reality is that patients are being left to wait way beyond that timeline. Last summer, the Irish Cancer Society rang the alarm bell loudly. They raised the major regional disparities that exist in accessing cancer treatments, with patients in the West often waiting seven or even eight weeks for their chemotherapy. That is terrifying. This is not the first time Taoiseach that I have raised serious concerns around access to chemotherapy. You will recall the scandal of 800 children's chemotherapy appointments being cancelled in 2023. The National Cancer Strategy was designed to guarantee prompt diagnosis and treatment. But while Ireland has come a long way, experts like Professor Michael McCarthy have warned that it is getting tougher and tougher to deliver care on time. He says we are now behind the curve and we are slipping back. Advocates have repeatedly warned that we do not have enough staff, space or equipment to cope and the human cost is being paid by patients and families. This has to change because lives are on the line. I want you to tell me how many other cancer patients are currently left waiting and waiting like this. And I want you to tell us what action you are going to take in this regard to guarantee that no patient, not one single patient, is left to wait weeks and weeks to start their life-saving chemotherapy. Thank you, Deputy Chief Shockley. Please. Well, first of all, I thank the Deputy for raising this issue, which is an extremely important issue. Obviously, I am not familiar with the background of this specific case that you have referenced here just now. And if you wish to send me the details of the case, with the permission of the person concerned, I perhaps will be in a position to interrogate the issue more with the NCCP, which is the National Cancer Control Programme, and indeed with the HSE and with the hospital, because we have invested very significantly in cancer care. Cancer is a very traumatic diagnosis for any individual, or indeed for any family. And obviously, given the levels of investment in our services, we want the best possible outcomes. And thankfully, over the last number of decades, we have improved very significantly outcomes for cancer diagnosis, and particularly in terms of breast cancer. Breast cancer survivors are now the largest cancer survivor group in Ireland, making up 22% of all cancer survivors. Almost 50,000 women have had a breast cancer diagnosis. That doesn't mitigate or take from the trauma that the individual person that you referred to this morning has experienced. And as you know, there have been a variety of new treatments, new drugs and so on for cancer. We've invested significantly in all of that. I think in the last three to four years, close to 650 million have been invested in new drug therapies for cancer alone. And the radiation oncology centres have been established and so forth. Now, on the waiting times, systematic breast disease clinics operate in about nine hospitals around the country, the eight cancer centres and a satellite clinic in Letterkenny. The HSE National Cancer Control Programme has set a target of 95% of urgent referrals being seen within 10 working days and 95% of non-urgent referrals to be seen within 12 weeks. And to date, 62% of urgent referrals have met the time frame of 10 working days. That needs to improve. Over that, there's no doubt. In October, three cancer centres, St. James' Hospital, University Hospital Waterford and University Hospital Limerick, exceeded the 95% target for urgent referrals. An additional three centres, St. Vincent's, Galway University Hospital and the MATA report that they expect to meet the target by the end of the year. So Galway, which I think is the hospital here that was involved in this case, are saying to the NCCP that they expect to meet the target by the end of 2025. And so I think we need to, certainly if you can send me on the details of the case, I'll pursue that with the hospital and with the NCCP. Because the NCCP is working with various hospitals in terms of restoring the service within the agreed time frames. And when there's a particular performance issue, the NCCP then works with the hospital in terms of site-specific measures. That could mean funding additional clinics or additional medical cover where necessary. And in terms of the variation across the country, the NCCP has introduced a range of guidelines aimed at ensuring standardised access to cancer services across the country, leading to more appropriate referrals within the cancer services. And it's examining the national symptomatic breast disease pathway, including triage and review of key performance metrics and updating the national clinical guidelines. And again, as I've said, we do need to work out the specific issue here, because the University Hospital Galway, I'm being informed, has indicated it would be on target or would be in target by the end of last December. Thank you, Tisha. Following recruitment and the running of additional clinics. Thank you. Deputy MacDonald to respond. You see, the issue here, Tisha, is this isn't a specific or an isolated incident. And I would like to know the extent of this. I know this case around this woman in particular. I've given you the details on it. But Dr. Michael McCarthy, he's president, by the way, of the Irish Society of Medical Oncology. And he, in the summertime, said the following. The reality in Galway is that patients are now typically, typically, waiting seven to eight weeks for their first session. And with every week that passes, the risk increases that their cancer will grow, or worse, that it will spread to other parts of their body. So this is not an isolated phenomenon. I have set out for you the profound distress, the terror and distress that this woman and her family experience, but she's not on her own. So I want to know from you, I want, we need numbers, we need figures, we need to know exactly how widespread this experience is, and more importantly, what you will do to fix this urgently. Well, as I said earlier, I would appreciate if you could give us the specifics of the individual case that you've identified, because then we could track that with the hospital. Because it is important to do that, because Galway are saying, have said late last year, that they would have, they would meet the NCCP targets by the end of December. And that, but also in terms of treatment, we need to get, but we need, in any event, I think it would be useful if you could send us the details of the case, with the permission, with the permission of the person, obviously. And confidentiality would apply, and confidentiality would apply without question, because there has been a lot of investment in cancer services, quite rightly so. Systematic breast disease was one of the first areas that we identified a long time ago as requiring specific allocation of resources and investment from cancer screening right through. With, from a national point of view, with very improved results, in terms of outcomes, which is what we all want, in terms of, and it's important that overall, survival rates are improved very, very significantly, and that needs to be said as well, to ease any concerns that people who might be recently diagnosed would understandably have. 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