I am grateful to speak on International Women's Day. I take this opportunity to remember the great Dolores Keane, who passed away recently. She was a wonderful woman who was raised in a small cottage in the west of Ireland by her aunts Rita and Sarah. She went on to amazing things. With her unique voice and her charm she represented Ireland remarkably over many years. The likes of Dolores, who had such a special talent, we will sadly not see again. May she rest in peace. I know everyone in the House will join me in offering our condolences. Dolores Keane died in the week we are celebrating International Women's Day. It is not lost on anyone that she passed away in a week when we are celebrating women in this country and right across the world. Dolores spoke openly in recent years about her successful battle against breast cancer. We can do a lot more to protect women in this country in relation to screening. I have seen many statistics on breast cancer and survival rates, the delays in treatment in some hospitals and the backlog that exists and has existed for some time in breast cancer screening services and the geographical disparity is concerning. Breast cancer affects almost every family at some stage, and we need to ensure the best possible outcomes, early diagnosis and early treatment are available for all women. Some 250,000 fewer people were screened for breast cancer, cervical cancer and bowel cancer in 2020 than in 2019 - 250,000 fewer people. This was as a result of the Government shutdown due to Covid-19. It is incredible that those services were shut and that, as a result, 250,000 fewer people were screened. Many screening services are still playing catch-up from those shutdowns and many cancers have gone undiagnosed until it was too late. In my constituency recently, screening was paused for a gentleman, not because he was not ready, but because the system could not cope. That is incredible. Not only are there delays and backlogs in screening, but there are major delays in treatment as well. Last year, the HSE told us that 72% of patients deemed fit for radiation treatment start it within three weeks of being diagnosed. This means that one quarter of cancer patients who are ready for treatment are left waiting for three weeks to receive radiation treatment. I have seen this in my work in weekly constituency clinics and it is devastating to have to sit down with constituents who tell me they are ready for treatment and know their cancer is progressing. I try to get them seen, but the system cannot facilitate them. Early diagnosis and early treatment are fundamentally important. In recent weeks, Aontú discovered there is a 15% difference in breast cancer survival rates depending on the county a woman is from. A woman from Limerick has only an 80% chance of being alive in five years after breast cancer but a woman from Cavan has a 95% chance of surviving cancer within a five-year period. That is really quite incredible. There are many targets from the Irish Cancer Society that are still not being reached. There is so much more we can and should do and it is important to raise that in the context of International Women's Day.

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