A woman from the west of Ireland with breast cancer had to wait six weeks to start chemotherapy and only received treatment when she presented at the emergency department in significant pain, the Dáil has heard.
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said the HSE’s National Cancer Strategy target is 15 days from diagnosis to treatment, but in some regions patients have had to wait up to eight weeks.
Highlighting the “alarming and distressing case”, she said the woman’s mother died from the same disease in her 40s.
Ms McDonald said that although the woman was “terrified ... she didn’t give in to fear”. She said the woman was “up for the fight and she expected that the health system would have her back”.
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Ms McDonald said “it is very shocking that it was only after she was admitted to hospital that she started treatment. Otherwise she would have still been left waiting.”
The woman was referred to University Hospital Galway for chemotherapy, “and expected to commence her treatment with the urgency required”.
“The stress and the anxiety of having cancer, worrying about it growing and spreading but not being treated, got worse for her day by day,” said Ms McDonald.
They began “begging for chemo”. She offered to travel to other hospitals, but her wait continued until she presented at the emergency department in “significant pain”.
The Sinn Féin leader said the Irish Cancer Society “rang the alarm bell loudly” last summer about “major regional disparities that exist in accessing cancer treatments”, with patients in the west often waiting seven or even eight weeks for their chemotherapy.
“That is terrifying,” Ms McDonald said.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin said the Government has invested very significantly in cancer care and “we want the best possible outcomes”.
He said that, over the last number of decades, “we have improved very significantly outcomes for cancer diagnosis, and particularly in terms of breast cancer”.
The National Cancer Control programme’s target is for 95 per cent of urgent referrals to be seen within 10 working days.
Mr Martin said “to date, 62 per cent of urgent referrals have met the time frame of 10 working days”, and that “needs to improve”.
Asking Ms McDonald to forward details of the case, he said University Hospital Galway had said it expected to meet the target by the end of 2025. He said he would pursue the case with the hospital and the National Cancer Control Programme.
Labour leader Ivana Bacik highlighted that 900,000 people are waiting for outpatient care or for an operation.
She told the Taoiseach that this is a “crisis unfolding on your watch, your waiting list” and that the €420 million waiting list action plan “failed to deliver on its minimal targets”.
The number of people waiting more than six months has increased by 12 per cent in just one year, “a stunning figure”, she said.
“And for children, it’s even worse, more than 17 per cent waiting more than 12 months.”
The Taoiseach rejected Ms Bacik’s claim that it was a “shambolic” health service. There has been a 12 per cent drop in patients waiting more than a year and a reduction in average times from 7.2 months to 6.5 months at the end of 2024.
“That’s against the backdrop of 9 per cent increase in outpatients and a 5 per cent increase in in-patient and day case attendances,” he said.
He acknowledged “we’ve got more to do here” and said they wanted to get to a 10- to 12-week waiting time.
But, he said, “in terms of key health outcomes, over the past decade, there have been very significant achievements”.
There are the eight cancer centres and a satellite clinic in Letterkenny, Mr Martin said. Three cancer centres: St James’s Hospital in Dublin, University Hospital Waterford and University Hospital Limerick, exceeded the 95 per cent target for urgent referrals.
An additional three centres: St Vincent’s University Hospital, the Mater Hospital in Dublin and University Hospital Galway “reported that they expected to meet the target by the end of the year”.
