Debate contribution: Healthcare: Cross-border Initiatives
Debate contribution by Mr Robin Swann on .
- MLA
- Mr Robin Swann
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 15 April 2024
- Type
- Debate contribution (made as a minister)
- Business
- Oral Answers to Questions
- Heading
- Healthcare: Cross-border Initiatives
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4482845
Read the official Assembly record
Text
The Member will be aware that I launched the Northern Ireland cancer strategy and made clear that it would be delivered to its fullest only when it was fully supported financially and that that would require parties' commitment to the service. Neither my Department nor I wants to scrimp on the strategy or not see it delivered fully. Unfortunately, we find ourselves in the position that the strategy has not been able to be progressed, as I said in an earlier answer, at the pace that I would like to have seen. That has been as a result of the lack of a recurrent budget and of having a Minister in position to drive it. There is not just ongoing work in the north-west, to which the Member referred. The All-Island Cancer Consortium is involved in cross-border work as well. There are discussions at the North/South strategic group about the development of priorities for joint research projects and clinical trials, which will be supported by funding from the Health Research Board in the Republic of Ireland. Cross-border work is therefore ongoing. I wish that I had the funding available to implement fully the cancer strategy that I launched when I was last in office.
204 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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