A doctor working for the British Columbia Cancer Agency in Canada is to replace Prof Tom Keane as director of the State’s cancer control programme, the Health Service Executive (HSE) announced this afternoon.
Dr Susan O’Reilly, a medical oncologist, had been the front runner to succeed Prof Keane who returned to Canada earlier this year after his two-year term reorganising cancer services.
Dr O’Reilly, who worked with Prof Keane at the British Columbia Cancer Agency before he returned to Ireland in 2007, will take up her new appointment in early September.
In a statement announcing Dr O’Reilly’s appointment, Prof Drumm said: ”We are delighted that Dr O’Reilly will be joining the HSE and leading the next stage in the development of our national cancer programme.
“Dr O’Reilly will bring great experience, expertise and leadership to the continued transformation and development of cancer services in Ireland.”
Minister for Health and Children Mary Harney also welcomed the announcement, saying "the approach of the British Columbia Cancer Agency is very similar to the Irish Cancer Control Strategy".
"Dr O'Reilly is one of foremost leaders of cancer control in Canada and I am confident she will build on the achievements of the National Cancer Control Programme that we have seen under the leadership of Professor Tom Keane," she said.
Originally from Wales, Dr O'Reilly studied electrical engineering at the University of Wales, Swansea, before completing a medical degree at Trinity College, Dublin.
After post graduate training in internal medicine in both Trinity College and University College Dublin teaching hospitals, she moved to Vancouver to specialise in oncology.
She is understood to have travelled to Ireland in recent weeks for talks with the HSE about the terms and conditions which would attach to the job.
There had been worries that Dr O’Reilly may have been put off the job as a result of Prof Keane’s inability to persuade the HSE board to give him certain guarantees in relation to budgets and other issues were he to succeed Prof Drumm.
During Prof Keane’s two-year term as head of the State’s cancer control programme, the diagnosis and surgical treatment of breast cancer was centralised into eight designated cancer centres.