The national breast cancer screening programme will finally begin offering a service to women in the west and south next September, it was confirmed yesterday.
BreastCheck said construction of screening units was now under way in Galway and Cork and would be ready to begin inviting women for screening next autumn.
"We don't see anything bar a natural disaster getting in the way of that timeframe," director of BreastCheck, Tony O'Brien, said.
He added that screening of all eligible women in those regions was expected to be complete within about two years. The service is free and offered every two years to women in the 50-64 age group.
BreastCheck began screening women in 2000 and has gradually been extended around the country, though the delay in extending it to all regions has led to a number of protests. Last year it was extended to Carlow and in May of this year to Kilkenny.
Mr O'Brien's comments came as BreastCheck published its annual report for 2005, which showed some 79,262 women were invited for screening last year and 59,960 women, or 76.6 per cent of eligible women took up the invitation.
The number of cancers diagnosed was 318. This represented a detection rate of 5.3 cancers per 1,000 women screened.
Mr O'Brien said the number of women screened last year was 19 per cent up on the previous year, as the regions covered had been extended and the number of radiographers working in the service had increased.
Referring to the fact that almost a quarter of women invited for screening decided against attending last year, he said this was a "very significant" number and the programme would have to try new ways of communicating to those women the benefits of the scheme.
"Our own research indicates that there are a number of fear factors and other barriers that can prevent women from coming forward, so it's one of our great challenges to reassure people that there is nothing to fear, that there is everything to gain," he said.
"I think the mere fact that 60,000 women attended for screening last year shows that this is an absolutely normal thing to do. The vast majority of those women went home with the all-clear. For a relatively small number who were diagnosed with breast cancer, they were diagnosed at an early stage, they got very rapid treatment, and for most of them, certainly not for all of them, but for most of them, their life chances will now be as good as if they hadn't had breast cancer in the first place," he said.
Once women underwent screening they would get their results back within 21 days or less. To date BreastCheck has diagnosed 1,867 women with breast cancer.
Meanwhile, the organisation will shortly be getting into discussions with the Government about extending screening to women up to 69 years of age, which Mr O'Brien said "had significant resource implications".