Debate contribution: Cancer Services and Outcomes

Debate contribution by Mrs Linda Dillon on 18 November 2025.

MLA

Mrs Linda Dillon

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

18 November 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Cancer Services and Outcomes

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5244937

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you very much. I thank the Minister for his remarks, and I thank the Members who tabled the motion. I honestly think that we could talk about the issue for 50 minutes and still not cover what has been said in the Chamber today. However, everything that we have heard confirms what we already know, which is that cancer waiting times in the North are no longer just a performance issue; they are a patient safety emergency. Delays here cost people life-saving treatment. They cost lives. We are now the worst-performing region on these islands for cancer waiting times, and that gap is widening. That is a result of more than a decade of chronic underfunding by the British Government, combined with a deliberate political project to run health services down and push more care into the private sector. We have been left carrying the consequences of decisions that were not made here, by people here or for people here. I turn specifically to the price that women pay, because that is where the delay becomes especially dangerous. Survival rates in the North for ovarian cancer are among the worst on these islands. Ovarian cancer is often diagnosed late, and survival drops sharply with every week of delay. Breast cancer waiting times, which we have already referenced, have deteriorated even in the absence of rising demand. Women are being diagnosed later and treated later, and, far too often, the window of curative treatment is narrowing when it does not need to. I attended the North/South Inter-Parliamentary Association meeting last Friday, and one of the plenary sessions focused on cancer services North and South. The presentations were outstanding. The speakers talked about the research and the work that has gone on, but we need to understand whether that research is being used. I am hopeful that we will see really good stuff in the strategy. Is it being used to direct where we put the resources that, as the Minister rightly points out, are limited? Are they being put where they need to be? Are those resources being used in the best possible way to ensure that we save as many lives as we can with the limited resources that we have? We also had presentations from the North West Cancer Centre. They said that they had the staff and the people ready to go and could provide stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) to prostate and lung cancer patients in the North West Cancer Centre, but they are currently the only radiotherapy department not providing that on these islands. We need to understand why that is and why we cannot look at that seriously. Mr Carroll made a comment in relation to the distance that children have to travel. As a rural representative, I absolutely, hand on heart, feel for anyone who has to travel for treatment, but, in those presentations, we were told by the national cancer control programme that combining four centres for children into one has had outstanding consequences for improved treatment and outcomes for children. It is about getting those children access and making sure that they are comfortably brought to where they need to be and kept where they need to be, if that is necessary, with family members.

Thank you. I absolutely agree with the Member. That is my next point. I want to highlight the rural dimension. For women and men in rural communities, including Mid Ulster, the system is even harder to navigate, with longer travel, limited public transport and fewer diagnostic hubs all contributing to later presentation and poorer outcomes. That is exactly why cross-border cancer care is not an optional extra but a necessity. The evidence is already clear. Cooperation through the North/South US National Cancer Institute partnership has delivered major benefits from shared trials and training to Altnagelvin's cross-border cancer centre, which is now European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) accredited. An all-island approach can expand access to clinical trials, accelerate diagnosis, share specialist capacity and attract major investment through initiatives, such as the proposed all-island oncology innovation cluster. Rural patients should not have worse chances simply because of where they live. Strengthening cross-border links ensures that they can access the right care in the right place, including services just across the border in Donegal or Dublin. The Department has spent hundreds of millions of pounds on the Encompass system across the North.

That level of investment must deliver more than new IT infrastructure; it must deliver real-world improvements for patients. That means integrating primary care, including GP care, into Encompass so that we have a single, accurate view of every patient's journey. Without that, we cannot track patients properly, identify the highest-risk cases or manage backlogs safely.

Encompass should already be giving us live information on delays, diagnostics, treatment stages and bottlenecks. If we are not seeing that yet, we need answers on when we will and why we are not. Transparency and real-time data — many Members have referred to the data — are the only way to protect patient safety and rebuild trust. It is not just about collecting data but about how we use it to achieve real-life improvements for people. Turnaround requires robust tracking of every patient, active prioritisation of those who are at the highest risk and firm accountability in each trust. That type of management is standard elsewhere, and it must become the standard here. That will only happen, however, with transparency, urgency and political will. I want to say to Sinéad McLaughlin that we are thinking of you and your family, and we sincerely hope that you will have the best possible outcome. I will give you a quick example. When I was 19 years old, I discovered a lump on a Sunday night; I saw my GP on the Monday morning; I was in Daisy Hill Hospital on the Wednesday; and I had the lump removed on the Friday. My mother, who never went to hospital, although she worked in the health service all her life, repeatedly went to her GP and the ED, but she died of stomach cancer, because she was not diagnosed until a nurse told her to sit in an emergency department until she saw the consultant who she needed to see. That is the difference that we can make if we get this right.

1,058 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:02 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

Disagree with this assessment?

Classifications can be challenged. A person reads every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.

Challenge this classification