Minister for Health Mary Harney has warned that world-class cancer services cannot be provided in every hospital in Ireland.
All the evidence suggests that you get the best outcome when cancer services are moved to centres where there are high volumes of activit
Minister for Health Mary HarneySpeaking at an patient-safety conference in Dublin today, Ms Harney said difficult decisions need to be taken on cancer services at a local level in this country.
"All the evidence suggests that you get the best outcome when cancer services are moved to centres where there are high volumes of activity," she said.
Ms Harney said she remained convinced that patients who are offered a choice of a local service or a high-quality service would opt for quality.
Her comments come as details of a Health Service Executive plan to confine specialist breast cancer services to eight or nine locations in the Republic emerged today.
The plan, which is near completion, has identified four or five centres in Dublin as suitable for dedicated breast cancer services, according to The Irish Times.
It also says there should be specialist centres in Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford, but significantly similar facilities are unlikely to be provided in the northwest or midlands.
The group, established to oversee the plan, was set up after an expert body recommended a network of specialist centres.
Although it had originally been expected that some 13 hospitals would be selected, it is understood that a decision has been made to have one breast cancer unit for every 500,000 people.
This will enable eight or nine diagnostic and treatment centres to be chosen.