McGarry hits out on Radiotherapy
Issued : Monday 27 November, 2006
In responding to last week’s Sligo Champion raising the issues of cancer care in the North West, Cllr. Jim McGarry praised the paper for highlighting the shortcomings where radiotherapy is concerned.
Last week’s front page (wed. 8th nov), the labour candidate said, featured a picture of a local deputy presenting over 13,000 signatures calling on his Taoiseach to provide a radiotherapy service to the area. The coverage which the Champion has been giving to the campaign for better medical services in Sligo, whether calling for breast-check facilities or a radiotherapy unit, is to be highly commended. The accompanying editorial “Radiotherapy: people have spoken, now let’s have a response” echoes the thoughts and wishes of our entire community.
But many readers must be wondering why government ministers have to resort to collecting signatures for something so vital to the constituents when their party has been in power for almost ten years. Until comparatively recently Fianna Fail held the health ministry and now seek to hide behind Mary Harney, the PD’s and the HSE as an excuse for non-delivery. It is not too cynical to suggest that the upcoming general election has concentrated some minds and this accounts for their resorting to photo-calls and public relations in place to firm commitments and action.
In an earlier edition, the Sligo Champion printed a call from me under the heading “Radiotherapy” North West the loser again”, in which I complained that a fanfare government announcement that a network of radiotherapy services would be provided by 2011 had once more left the North West out in the cold. In this announcement the specialist cancer treatment centres were to be located in Dublin, one in Cork and one in Galway with two satellite units in Limerick and Waterford. No mention was made of Sligo.
Mary Harney declared that political consideration had nothing to do with her choice of locations. I asked was it just a coincidence that the PD’s had seats in Dublin, Limerick and Galway with a possibility of regaining seats in cork and Waterford? It seemed to me that this party had more clout than the six Fianna Fail Oireachtas members from the old Sligo-Leitrim constituency!
And is it too cynical to wonder why a petition launched last March is being presented now, eight months later?
Last June, Sligo and North-Leitrim Labour branches collected thousands of signatures demanding that the breast-check screening programme be extended to the women of the North-West. Together with other labour groups from the West and South, these signatures were presented to a secretary of the Dept of Health after a demonstration outside Dail Eireann. Later, some Fianna Fail politicians in the West, including Sligo, took up the issue. What was not mentioned by these Fianna Fail campaigners was that, as far back as 27th March 2003, Micheal Martin, TD then Minister for Health announced the extenision of breast check coverage to counties Galway, Sligo, Roscommon, Donegal, Mayo, Leitrim, Clare and Tipperary North! We are still waiting the implementation which is now planned for 2007. Can we be forgiven for being sceptical? Roll on the general election.
Cllr 
