JUST 10 hospitals in the State will be offering breast cancer diagnosis and surgery by the end of this year, the State's cancer control director Prof Tom Keane said yesterday.
This would be down from the 33 hospitals which were providing these services in June last year, he said.
The goal is to reach a point early next year when the services are provided at eight designated cancer centres only.
Dublin's Tallaght hospital will be among the last two hospitals to lose its breast surgery services.
Prof Keane, who was speaking at a healthcare conference at Croke Park, said he will then move on to tackle issues around the provision of lung and prostate cancer services.
"I've just established a national group to advise me on what needs to be done . . . in relation to national standards for prostate cancer and for lung cancer and on rolling them out," he said.
He said rapid access to diagnostics was the main issue here - as only small numbers of hospitals were currently carrying out surgery on patients with lung and prostate cancer.
"I believe there is a very significant need to enhance the diagnostic component for lung cancer and prostate cancer," Prof Keane said.
He will be seeking funding for this next year.
Prof Keane, from British Columbia, who is here for two years to implement the Republic's new cancer control plan, said that the culture in Ireland is to compete rather than collaborate in healthcare, an approach which he finds unusual.
"I'm absolutely astonished how competitive healthcare professionals are . . . and at the level of mutual mistrust, particularly among doctors, in sharing information with their colleagues - or competing over resources," he said.