Dismay over breast services transfer

WE have learned with dismay of the proposed transfer of symptomatic breast services from Mayo General Hospital to University College Hospital Galway (UCHG), which is to be 90% completed by the end of 2009.

Government policy with regard to the delivery of cancer services, issued on September 27, 2007, stated that eight cancer centres would be developed nationally. In the west, this centre was to be based in Galway.

Instructions were issued to a number of named hospitals (Portiuncula, Ballinasloe and Roscommon) to cease breast surgery immediately. Mayo General Hospital was not one of these hospitals and so, we ask, who made this decision?