First of all, I thank the Deputy for raising this issue, which is an extremely important one. Obviously I am not familiar with the background of the specific case she has referenced just now. If she wishes 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 the hospital. We have invested very significantly in cancer care. Cancer is a very traumatic diagnosis for any individual or family and, obviously, given the levels of investment in our services, we want the best possible outcomes. Thankfully, over the last number of decades, we have improved outcomes of cancer diagnoses significantly, 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 does not mitigate or take from the trauma that the individual person the Deputy referred to this morning has experienced. As the Deputy knows, there have been a variety of new treatments, new drugs and so on for cancer. We have invested significantly in all of that. In the last three to four years, close to €650 million has been invested in new drug therapies for cancer alone and the radiation-oncology centres have been established and so forth. On the waiting times, symptomatic breast disease clinics operate in approximately nine hospitals around the country - the eight cancer centres and a satellite clinic in Letterkenny. The HSE national cancer control programme, NCCP, has set a target of 95% of urgent referrals being seen within ten working days and 95% of non-urgent referrals to be seen within 12 weeks. To date, 62% of urgent referrals have met the timeframe of ten working days. That needs to improve. Of that, there is no doubt. In October, three cancer centres - St. James's Hospital, University Hospital Waterford and University Hospital Limerick - exceeded the 95% target for urgent referrals. An additional three centres - St. Vincent's, University Hospital Galway and the Mater - reported that they expected to meet the target by the end of the year. Galway, which I think is the hospital involved in this case, has said to the NCCP that it expects to meet the target by the end of 2025. Certainly, if the Deputy sends me on the details of the case, I will pursue that with the hospital and the NCCP because the NCCP is working with various hospitals in terms of restoring the service within the agreed timeframes. When there is a particular performance issue, the HSE works with the hospital on site-specific measures. That could mean funding additional clinics or additional medical cover, where necessary. 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 cancer services. It is examining the national symptomatic breast disease pathway, including triage, review of key performance metrics and updating the national clinical guidelines. We need to work out the specific issue here because University Hospital Galway, I have been informed, has indicated it would be on target by the end of last December-----
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-----following recruitment and the running of additional clinics.
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As I said earlier, I would appreciate if the Deputy could give us the specifics of the individual case she has identified because then we could track that with the hospital. It is important to do that because Galway hospital said late last year that it would meet the NCCP targets by the end of December.
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Yes, but also in terms of treatment. We need to get-----
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In any event, I think it would be useful if the Deputy could send us the details of the case-----
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-----with the permission of the person, obviously. Confidentiality will apply, without question. There has been a lot of investment in cancer services, and quite rightly so. Symptomatic breast disease was one of the first areas that we identified a long time ago as requiring a specific allocation of resources and investment from cancer screening right through, and, from a national point of view, it has had very improved results in terms of outcomes, which is what we all want for cancer. It is important that, overall, survival rates have improved very significantly. That needs to be said as well-----
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-----to ease any concerns that people who might have been recently diagnosed will understandably have.
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Ar dtús báire ní aontaím leis an Teachta go hiomlán mar ar an taobh eile den scéal tá dul chun cinn le feiscint i gcuid mhaith nithe sa córas sláinte agus caithfear é sin a adhmháil mar aon le gach scéal eile. The key issue with waiting lists is waiting times and that always has to be the target. The shorter the time someone has to wait for an operation or other intervention, the better the outcome, and that is always the priority in respect of capacity and waiting times. Over the last while, we have had the biggest expansion of access to free GP care in the history of the State, so it is not a shambolic health service. We have had a 12% reduction in patients on waiting lists exceeding 12 months and a reduction in average times from 7.2 months to 6.5 months at the end of 2024. That is the average waiting time. That is against the backdrop of a 9% increase in outpatients and a 5% increase in inpatient and day case attendances. There is a lot more to achieve and we have a lot more to do here. I acknowledge that. We want to get to the ten-to-12-week waiting time under Sláintecare objectives, and funding has been allocated, but I do think we need to see things in perspective. The Deputy describes it as "shambolic". It not shambolic.
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It is wrong to say that because when you look at our overall outcomes as a country, there is huge funding that has gone into health and I am sure the Deputy will acknowledge that. She has said it is not an issue of resources and significant funding has gone in, but in terms of key health outcomes over the past decade, there have been significant achievements. Ireland is now among a small group of only seven European Union countries where life expectancy is above 82 years. Our mortality rate fell by 11% over the decade 2014 to 2023. The mortality rate for all circulatory system diseases fell by 20% in that period, with heart disease and stroke falling by 28% and 37%, respectively. The Deputy had a cut at the stroke services and every individual case is terrible and traumatic when it happens, but surely she must acknowledge the progress that has been made on stroke and interventions over the last number of years with the new stroke centres and so on. It has been quite dramatic and transformative in the treatment of stroke in the country. The mortality rate for all cancers dropped by 15% in that period, with cancers of the trachea, bronchus and lung and breast cancer dropping by 21% and 22%, respectively. The mortality rate for all respiratory system diseases has fallen by 15%, with chronic lower respiratory diseases and pneumonia falling by 9% and 41%, respectively.
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I do not say that to minimise any trauma any individual goes through but we need a balanced debate in perspective and to acknowledge the progress that has been made while resolving to do even better in respect of other issues.
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Yes, we can. Indeed, over the last number of years, we have dramatically increased capacity. Deputy Bacik mentioned the beds but she forgot to mention that, by the end of 2024 alone, we had 1,300 additional beds in the system. As the Deputy will know, during the Covid period, we took the opportunity to dramatically increase bed capacity in our hospital system, particularly in the critical care area, where there was significant increase in the number of beds. We expanded our ICU capacity by about 28%, which is significant. Obviously, health is a comprehensive area, so primary care is critical. We now have 180 primary care centres - that is 51 extra since 2020 - and we will continue to work on that. We are progressing the development of four elective hospitals, which I think will be very important in the context of waiting times, and the surgical hubs that the Minister has committed to. As the Deputy will know, the first surgical hub at Mount Carmel has opened and that has already had a very significant impact on waiting times in that area.
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Four more are due to open in 2026.
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First of all, the Deputy has made an assertion and equated the ending of the one-off cost-of-living measures that were introduced during the height of the Ukraine energy crisis and so forth with cuts. That is wrong and he knows that. That is the first assertion, premised upon which his arguments are made, that is flawed. We must embed into the permanent social protection system, employment system, transport system, education system and health system supports that are permanent for people with a disability. That is what I intend to do and that is what this Government intends to do, through the Cabinet subcommittee on disability and through the new disability unit within my Department. We are prioritising the budgetary measures towards disability and will continue to do so. The ESRI's analysis in terms of the last budget bares that out. I accept the one-off measures had an impact right across society but it simply was not fiscally sustainable to continue with one-off measures, bottom line. However, what is sustainable is, in terms of our various budgets through social protection, education and health, creating additional and permanent resources for people with disabilities. That is what we have been doing and will continue to do. As regards the cost of disability issue, first of all, in the budget we delivered a record 20% increase in disability services funding through the Department for children and disability, increasing that to about €3.8 billion. That is to invest in services, which is needed by any yardstick. We have to continue that and consistently increase it over time. We have significantly prioritised education, particularly investment in special education and special classes right across the board, higher education and independent living, particularly in terms of participation in third level education and research for students with disabilities. On the cost of disability support payment, the Minister, Deputy Calleary, is leading this work in close partnership with disabled people, advocates and the organisations involved and will come to the Government with proposals in the first half of this year. Analysis by the ESRI and the Department of Finance confirms the impacts of the decisions we took in the budget in terms of the at risk of poverty rate across the population falling by 1.7% and the population affected by disability reducing by 3.8%. Older people felt the largest impact and then for people with disabilities, it fell by 3.8%. The measures we took in the budget had impact and they are permanent measures. That relates to social protection. There was the €20 increase in domiciliary care allowance and, as the Deputy knows, the earnings disregard for the carer's allowance for a single person and for a couple expanded.
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The disregards will continue to expand in budgets to come.
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We are not restoring once-off payments across the board. We are not going to do that but we are going to continue to support, right through every area of government, supports for people with disabilities. We are going to implement the new strategy, which was agreed with advocates and organisations that advocate for people with disabilities, in consultation with the various organisations, in particular, in the fields of employment. In the field of mobility and transport, the Minister for Transport will be coming to the Government shortly with a new scheme in respect of financial supports and adaptations that is much broader than earlier schemes have been. We are working in every Department to improve the situation for people with disabilities, particularly in the areas of education, employment and health. Measures already introduced in the budget facilitate that. Broadening the income disregards for carer's allowance was one of the most significant measures this year in the budget compared to previous budgets. That will continue. We are going to do it in a sustained and consistent way that will be permanently embedded in the public expenditure system in this country.
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More fundamentally, we acknowledge that there are very significant pressures on people in terms of costs and pricing and making ends meet. The most effective way to deal with that is how you manage the economy more broadly and how you get inflation down to very low levels and have average wage growth and real income growth that significantly helps people to deal with those pressures. If you look at nominal wage growth in the economy, it is at approximately 5.5% or 5%. Inflation is at 2%. In 2024, 2025 and 2026, we are, for the first time in a while, looking at real income growth, which will help workers. It does not deal with it in its entirety but it will help workers deal with the pressures of increased costs. There were very significant increases in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the oil and energy crisis that arose from that. We decided in the budget to invest in services, which is important in terms of education, health and so forth, but also to invest in social protection to protect the lowest income groups, which we did fairly comprehensively in the last budget. The results are there from the ESRI analysis in terms of the lowest income deciles, which got the highest allocation of resources. I would like the Deputy to acknowledge that. Those are not my figures; they are ESRI figures in respect of that reality. We did it in terms of the fuel allowance. We increased it but we also increased the coverage of it, in other words, 26% of people will now avail of the fuel allowance, particularly those on the working family payment. This will help in that regard. Our population has grown dramatically, which is really putting pressure on services. It is extraordinary that from 1995 to today, our population went up 52%. That has an enormous impact on services. In many ways, there is positivity in that in terms of the Irish economy growing. In the last number of years, that increase has continued. Fundamentally, managing the economy means creating jobs. The most effective way to deal with cost-of-living and poverty pressures is to make sure there is employment available to people. At the moment, our unemployment rate is in or around 5%, if we take 15-year-olds and onwards. Those are the figures, but our rate of participation in employment is increasing all the time and average weekly earnings are up significantly as well. Through the broader management of the economy, investment in services, infrastructure, housing, education, health and childcare are the areas we decided to prioritise in the budget, along with social protection. In the social protection framework, we said we would look after those at risk of poverty as the key priority, and we did that.
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We reduced VAT on energy and we extended that reduction to 2030. We did that.
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There is an issue with electricity prices. There is no question about that. The Minister has set up an affordability group on energy to deal with that. There are regulatory issues and more pan-European issues. We are an island nation. There is wider distribution. We are investing hugely in the grid and choosing investment in infrastructure because we need to make sure the growing population has access to energy in the years to come. We are prioritising in a strategic way the allocation of resources for the benefit of all of our people into the future. The Deputy referenced the carbon tax and so on. That is helping us to address fuel poverty, particularly for those on the lowest incomes. It is helping us to deal with the dramatic transformation of retrofitting investment, for example, which is a very effective way of reducing the cost of energy for many households. A huge number of households have benefited from that. Agriculture has also benefited from allocations from that source also.
Sentiment score: 0.13