Dún Laoghaire TD Richard Boyd Barrett made his return to the Dáil last week after receiving treatment for cancer.
The People Before Profit TD announced in April that he would temporarily be vacating his Dáil seat while he underwent treatment for throat cancer.
The treatment was successful, and Boyd Barrett was welcomed back by both government and opposition TDs alike on Tuesday (November 4).
He said, “my biggest debt of gratitude is to the fantastic people who work in our health services, particularly the cancer services, in my case in St. Luke’s Hospital, and the eye and ear hospital.”
He praised the staff, saying, “they gave me my life back.”
“50% of people will have an encounter with cancer during their lives. Some 44,000 people this year will get a cancer diagnosis. The Irish Cancer Society made a whole series of requests pre-budget. It is still not clear whether any of those have been met to fully fund and resource the national cancer strategy.”
Boyd Barrett discussed his treatment and said that his first-hand experience gave him a better insight into healthcare issues.
“There is a particular issue for me and for the people who provided me with care in St. Luke’s in the area of radiation oncology machines. They are called linear accelerators. They, as well as the staff, have given me my life back.”
He noted, “some 50% of those people who get a cancer diagnosis each year, which is a very high figure, will need these machines. Fairly incredibly, 35% of those machines, which are supposed to be replaced every ten years, are now 15 to 17 years old. Some 40% will need to be replaced in the next five years.”
“This means there is a lot of discomfort and stress for patients and staff who need this lifesaving treatment. What the people who work in radiation oncology are asking for, and they have asked repeatedly for this, is a national radiotherapy replacement programme where there is centralised oversight and procurement and ring-fenced multiannual funding, going forward, so they do not have to come each year with a begging bowl for money to provide this absolutely vital machinery to save lives.”
Boyd Barrett said he was lobbying for more funding for radiotherapy services, saying he had first-hand experience of how underfunded and underresourced the services are.
Fianna Fáil TD and deputy leader Jack Chambers said, “in my negotiations and engagement with the Minister Carroll MacNeill, we will have over €9 billion of capital in our health system over the next five years; that is a record level.”
“The Minister is now developing a sectoral investment plan, working with the HSE on the capital needs in our system. Some of that will relate to radiation oncology or treatment interventions around replacing existing equipment. Others will obviously relate to new beds and building bed capacity across our system.”
Chambers explained, “as a government, we have prioritised funding our health system, funding more workers and beds in our health system and also funding the technological improvements that I think will yield greater improvements in life expectancy.”