Independent Ireland TD, Ken O’Flynn, has called on the HSE and the Minister for Health to publish full data on BreastCheck waiting times, capacity and cost, warning that women are being promised screening at an age the State cannot actually deliver, while it declines to expand the programme’s basic capacity.
“The State tells a woman she is eligible for breast screening at 50, then in practice she may not get her first appointment until she is 52 or 53,” Deputy O’Flynn said. “That is not a small administrative detail. That is two, sometimes three years where the reassurance she was promised simply is not there. And the day she turns 69 she is dropped from the programme entirely, as though the risk retires when she does.”
Last year, the Irish Cancer Society said in relation to screening that “we know that women are now being called at 52 or 53, rather than at 50.”
Deputy O’Flynn said the absence of clear public data makes the problem worse. Unlike other services, the HSE does not publish a single national figure showing how long women are waiting beyond their target date for a first BreastCheck appointment.
“You cannot fix what you will not measure in public,” he said. “There is no straightforward published figure for how far behind this programme actually is. We have been here before. CervicalCheck taught this country, at a terrible cost to women and their families, where a culture of not telling women the full picture ends up. Dr Scally’s answer was transparency and accountability, and I am not satisfied that every recommendation he made has even been delivered yet. I want the current status of every outstanding action set out in black and white.”
Deputy O’Flynn noted that eligibility for the programme has been widened to include some transgender, non-binary and intersex people on the basis of clinical risk factors such as long-term hormone exposure and the presence of breast tissue. He said no patient should be denied clinically appropriate care, but that any expansion of a national population screening programme must be costed and resourced in the open.
“No one should be refused care that is clinically right for them, and I want to be very clear about that,” he said. “But when the State widens who a national screening programme covers, the public is entitled to know what it costs, what extra staffing and mammography capacity it requires, and above all to be assured that it will not push women who are already waiting further down the queue. Those are fair questions. The HSE should answer them, not treat them as off limits.”
Deputy O’Flynn is seeking clear answers from the HSE and the Department of Health on the following: