PRESS RELEASE

06/02/2006

Kelleher urges City Manager to expedite BreastCheck planning application

Cork North-Central Fianna Fáil TD Billy Kelleher has urged Cork City Council to quickly process the Health Service Executive’s planning application for a BreastCheck clinic in the South Infirmary-Victoria University Hospital.

In a letter to the City Manager, Joe Gavin, Deputy Kelleher urged Cork City Council to ‘expedite the application within the letter of the law’ because the service is of such ‘vital importance’ to women in the southern region.

Deputy Kelleher, who is assistant Government chief whip and campaigned strongly for the early roll-out of BreastCheck, said the application should be ‘fast-tracked as much as possible to avoid any delay with this stage of the development process’.

‘I hope you will accept my request with the sincerity facilities such as these evoke,’ he said.

Deputy Kelleher’s plea comes as the Department of Health and Children last week gave the BreastCheck Unit permission to proceed to the next stage of the project. That involves submitting a planning application and preparing for the subsequent tendering process.

‘We must stay on target to have BreastCheck fully rolled out by 2007 - if not sooner. Both the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern TD, and Health Minister Mary Harney TD have made that pledge and we must stick to it. The planned southern clinic, which will include four mobile units, will invite up to 72,000 women for screenings in Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Waterford and Tipperary South.

‘The existing two-storey showroom and warehouses in the South Infirmary-Victoria University Hospital will be demolished and a new four-storey cancer-screening facility built for the BreastCheck service,’ said Deputy Kelleher.

ENDS