I welcome the proposal in this motion. Unfortunately, the incidence of cancer is increasing. Many cancer patients are being failed. There are roughly 42,000 people diagnosed with cancer per annum in the State. That is a huge number of people. The State has the third highest mortality rate for people with cancer in the European Union. Poorer former eastern bloc countries are doing better than we are. For example, in County Laois, approximately 270 people were diagnosed each year. That does not include non-melanoma skin cancer. Unfortunately, in the most recent figures that we have from 2024, 138 people died from cancer. I acknowledge the great work done by the Cuisle Cancer Support Centre in Portlaoise. Those centres need more Government support. A lot of the money is raised voluntarily. In Laois, people also face challenges with costs. Obviously, many of them do not have medical cards. They have to travel to hospitals generally in Dublin. They have to pay tolls, parking fees and extra fuel. One of things that needs to be done is to waive the parking charges for cancer patients. It is a very simple measure that can be taken. The delays in surgery are shocking. They are not being done within the timeframe. According to the Irish Cancer Society, 61% of prostate surgeries are not being done within the target timeframe. A total of 45% of breast surgeries and 39% of lung operations are not being done within the targeted timeframe. There are delays in radiotherapy, with 23% of cases not being done within the target timeframe, while in chemotherapy, the figure is 15%. That is shocking. Imagine the stress and worry for people who are delayed. I know somebody who was waiting and waiting. I had to intervene on their behalf at the time to get the necessary treatment that they needed. That is not good enough. There is also a lack of awareness around the symptoms and delayed diagnosis. We need to increase public awareness around that. In short, we need to expand the outdated diagnostic equipment that we have, invest in modern equipment and infrastructure in our hospitals and scale up because one in two of us is going to get cancer. That is the bad news. We need to expand the number of training places for cancer treatment staff because without staff, it cannot be done. Bowel cancer screening and BreastCheck are fantastic. Some work needs to be done to expand screening. We need a greater emphasis on prevention and awareness. We need to strengthen North-South co-operation. One of the things that we can do on a North-South basis is strengthen co-operation in cancer research and treatment. There is a lot of talk about screening. Maybe when we get older, we encounter this but the number of people I come across who have prostate cancer is significant. We need to provide free screening and free blood tests for prostate cancer for men aged over 60. We need to ban sunbeds. Using sunbeds is crazy. A ban on them is recommended by the Irish Cancer Society and I do not know of any sensible person who would not support such a ban. We need to give cancer patients automatic entitlement to medical cards. I have come across a case where a person died from cancer without being able to get a medical card. This person was not a millionaire. Their income was very modest but they could not get medical card because of the low income thresholds. If somebody has particularly stage 3 or 4 cancer, give them a bloody medical card because they need one. We should waive car parking charges for cancer patients. We should ask each hospital to do that. A simple voucher would do it.

Sentiment score: -0.25