There’s a TD for every 23,000 of us and a cancer specialist for 500,000

ACCORDING to the constitution, the number of TDs cannot be more than one per every 20,000 of the population, and cannot be less than one per every 30,000.

In other words, a TD can only represent between 20,000 and 30,000 people and has the protection of the constitution from being burdened with any more.

At the moment, there are 166 TDs, which equates to about one TD for every 23,000 people.

Aren’t they lucky - aren’t we - that none of them is a medical consultant in Cork dealing with oncology - or cancer, not to put a gloss on it?

Currently, there is only one of them in Cork, and his constituency amounts to 500,000 people in the Cork/Kerry region.

You can read the constitution from cover to cover, but I’m fairly certain you will not encounter the words ‘cancer’ or ‘oncology.’

In Dáil terms, Dr Seamus O’Reilly is doing the work of 21.739 TDs, given the present composition of the Dáil.

It goes without saying that he doesn’t - cannot - enjoy the same perks as our constitutionally-protected parliamentarians, such as three months’ holidays or the junkets abroad to study the relevance of high-rise apartment buildings in the Sahara, or some other such pressing issue.

What he’s got to rely on is his own integrity, a commodity scarcely in evidence in the Dáil.

It was this that impelled him to write to Tánaiste and Health Minister Mary Harney, and his letter to her was subsequently leaked to the Irish Examiner.

What the doctor had to say reflected the abominable treatment by the Government of cancer patients who were forced to suffer pain at home because they could not access hospital beds.

Patients were also placed in inappropriate wards because of the lack of a specialist unit.

It was also pointed out that because of the failure to roll out BreastCheck in Cork and Kerry, cancers took longer to diagnose.

The situation is so grim for 500,000 potential patients in the region that three consultants have already resigned because cancer services are so badly underfunded. As a result, the public outcry has been such that the issue sparked a furore in our national parliament this week.

What was remarkable was not that members of the Opposition were either ejected or left the Dáil in protest during the debate on Tuesday, but that the issue had not been broached by any of them long before then.

Fine Gael’s Bernard Allen and Labour’s Kathleen Lynch were asked to leave the chamber because they were, in the delicate words of the Fianna Fáil ceann comhairle Rory O’Hanlon, guilty of “gross disorder.”

The Green’s Dan Boyle joined them of his own volition outside the Dáil chamber. If it takes “gross disorder” to awaken a semblance of democracy in the Dáil in order to debate such a scandal, then what would it take to prevent such a scandal from happening in the first place?

Late in the day though their action may have been, at least they protested, unlike the sheepish silence maintained by Government backbenchers, who obviously believe that one oncologist per 500,000 people is quite acceptable.

It took front page exposure in this newspaper of the damning letter from Dr O’Reilly to prompt the Taoiseach to announce in the heated Dáil debate that final approval had been given for two major cancer facilities in Cork.

It seems that the city is to get a 10-bed oncology ward within a month and work will commence on a multi-million oncology, cardiac and renal centre next year.

Apparently, the decision to go ahead with these was made two weeks ago, according to the Health Service Executive. This was one week after Dr O’Reilly sent his letter to the Tánaiste.

Of course, we only have the Government’s word that this will happen, and from bitter experience we know what that word is worth.

Too often in the past they have promised to deliver and deliberately did not do so, offering the absurd excuse that the economy could not afford whatever they had promised.

Funny thing about our economy is that it seems to fluctuate between being the healthiest in Europe to being unable to afford something that people actually need but which the Government refuses to concede.

You don’t need to be an economist to predict that over the course of the next 17 months, or so, there won’t be any fluctuations. The economy will be the strongest in Europe, if not on the planet, because the looming general election ordains it so.

The economy - unlike our hospital services - will be in rude good health at that stage and those 2,000 phantom gardaí will be paraded once again and, with a feeling of déja vu, marched back to barracks as soon as they have fulfilled their spectral duty.

If they ever do materialise, they will probably graduate from the Pacific Western University in California, an institution apparently much admired by our Government.

It is hardly surprising that the Dáil was reduced to chaos when Bertie Ahern was attacked by the three main Opposition leaders over the doctor’s letter. What is incomprehensible is that it took the saturation coverage by this newspaper of the doctor’s letter to get the Opposition parties on their feet.

The fact that so many people in the Cork/Kerry region were - are - placed in jeopardy by the Government is testament to the disinterested and calculating way in which it treats people.

It also reflects the monumental silence of the Fianna Fáil backbenchers in the region who are more worried about toeing the party line than having the courage to speak out on issues of life and death.

If the contribution from Billy Kelleher - an inane remark to Kathleen Lynch about Bernard Allen hogging the radio interviews - is a measure of the depth of their concern about such a vital issue, then God help us.

Bertie Ahern can, and did, quote statistics to shore up his Government’s record on cancer services, but the indisputable fact remains: there is only one consultant medical oncologist attached to Cork University Hospital with 500,000 people to care for.

No dissembling on the Taoiseach’s part, no distortion of the facts can deny that appalling and shameful truth.

Talk about a specialist unit and a multi-million oncology, cardiac and renal centre is just that at the moment: talk.

A measure of the Ahern Government’s concern can be gauged from the fact that the minister for health, who is directly involved with this issue, couldn’t find the time to attend the debate in the Dáil.

Instead, Mary Harney’s junior minister, Tim O’Malley, had to apologise for her absence due to a prior engagement which clearly took precedence over the plight of 500,000 people in the South.