Professor John Kennedy

And unfortunately, we're in a situation where now we're looking at having to replace all of these machines in a very short period of time.

That is a major undertaking.

I think there has to be planning for routine replacement of extremely expensive and important equipment as it approaches the end of its natural life.

I'm talking about MRI scanners, PET scanners.

One of the big issues we have with cancer care, big issues, and it's other areas obviously as well, is access to diagnostic scanners.

They need to be upgraded and replaced and increased in number in the public system.

That's an emergency.

But I'm talking about very much routine care.

If you're a patient diagnosed with colon cancer and you have superb surgery, radiation in this hospital, in this country, that you get the excellent therapy, you then need to be followed carefully to make sure you don't have recurrent disease.

And that involves having, for the first few years, having routine scans, routine endoscopy.

Our ability to provide that in the appropriate time scale is really a problem because it tends to get pushed to one side because of emergency requirements.

And we don't have the capacity to deal with that.

And that needs to be addressed.

There's no doubt about that.

I've been told by some of our senior nursing colleagues that they spend about 20% of their time trying to get patients into scans for important staging scans or follow-up scans that need to be done for proper management of patients.

That's a waste of time.

that's a massive waste of time.

We should be investing in infrastructure and equipment and facilities.

There's going to be another National Cancer Strategy.

One of the great kudos you get in Europe, if you go to Europe, is that you guys have had a National Cancer Strategy every year since the first one of 1996 by Professor Fennelly from St.