It is good to be back. It is particularly good to be back in the aftermath of the successful campaign of Catherine Connolly. I congratulate her in her position as our new President. It is also good to be back on the day that a socialist gets elected in New York. Signs of hope and portents of the future.
Sentiment score: 0.52
Certainly not. We might learn a few lessons from it though. I also thank colleagues across the House for their kind words today and messages during, before and after my treatment. I also thank the thousands of members of the public who sent very kind messages. They were very heartening and very helpful. My biggest debt of gratitude is to the fantastic people who work in our health services, particularly the cancer services, in my case in St. Luke's Hospital, and the eye and ear hospital. There are similar people providing cancer services right across the country. They asked me to raise particular issues about the need to properly resource and support cancer services in this country. It is important to say that everybody has a stake in that happening. I did not know this, but 50% of people will have an encounter with cancer during their lives. Some 44,000 people this year will get a cancer diagnosis. The Irish Cancer Society made a whole series of requests pre-budget. It is still not clear whether any of those have been met to fully fund and resource the national cancer strategy. There is a particular issue for me and for the people who provided me with care in St. Luke's in the area of radiation oncology machines. They are called linear accelerators. They, as well as the staff, infrastructure and so on, have given me my life back. Some 50% of those people who get a cancer diagnosis each year, which is a very high figure, will need these machines. Fairly incredibly, 35% of those machines, which are supposed to be replaced every ten years, are now 15 to 17 years old. Some 40% will need to be replaced in the next five years. This means there is a lot of discomfort and stress for patients and staff who need this lifesaving treatment. What the people who work in radiation oncology are asking for, and they have asked repeatedly for this, is a national radiotherapy replacement programme where there is centralised oversight and procurement and ring-fenced multi-annual funding, going forward, so they do not have to come each year with a begging bowl for money to provide this absolutely vital machinery to save lives.
Sentiment score: -0.07
The professionals in this area stated in the context of the budget that radiotherapy services are operating significantly below capacity due to under-resourcing. They went on to state that our healthcare staff do everything they can to minimise the impacts on care for patients but it is simply not possible to provide optimal care in these conditions. Sixteen of 24 working days last month were affected by unscheduled downtime. Machines are breaking down because they are too old, putting stress on patients and staff. Some €23 million per year is being spent on outsourcing to the private sector because of machines breaking down and not being replaced, and because of the lack of a national replacement programme. As I said, doctors who should be providing services and care to patients are instead, in their own words, coming to the Minister, the Government and Departments begging for money, resources and so on to replace the machines they need to provide the care to save lives. The Minister needs to respond to the specific request to have a national programme for the replacement of these machines and to have the staff and infrastructure necessary to deliver it.
Sentiment score: 0.12