Ho ho ho, and what a great way to get a national profile for your charity and raise money for a good cause. The good cause last week was the introduction of a breastcancer screening service in the northwest.

Yes, a breast-cancer screening service.

It shouldn't have to be restated that the lack of such a service . . . in the Donegal area, in the west and midwest and parts of the south . . . is a national scandal. International best practice, recent cancer strategy reports, the recommendations made only last May by the awkwardly named National Quality Assurance Group for Symptomatic Breast Disease Services, cancer voluntary bodies . . .

and even the Department of Health and the HSE . . . all accept a national screening service is a vital primary tool in cutting cancer mortality rates. Yet still, local communities such as people in the North West Wellness Centre Committee have to rely on the generosity of their best-known 'celebrities' to raise money in the absence of a state-funded service.

Those in Donegal and other areas would argue that their planned clinic is better than nothing. And they are right . . . but better than nothing is not good enough. And providing such services on an ad-hoc basis could end up muddling services that already fall way short of the network of centres that are needed.

Last week, the Department of Health ordered Barringtons Hospital in Limerick to suspend its treatment of breast-cancer patients and transfer their care to the MidWestern Regional Hospital. Barringtons has been at the centre of controversy after a 51year-old woman who attended the hospital in 2005 had her treatment delayed for 18 months after she was wrongly given the allclear following an error in the reading of a specimen of breast tissue sent to University College Hospital Galway's laboratory. The move on Barringtons follows an investigation by the newly formed Health Information and Quality Authority and is in line with health minister Mary Harney's desire to ensure all cancer treatment services comply with standards for best practice.

But it hardly approaches the nub of the matter, which is the lack of integrated cancer services. People opt for private screening services because there are no public health screening services available where they live.

But are they are getting the best care?

The minister has accepted that screening must be part of a wider multidisciplinary approach and the department's own strategy is to designate teams which will serve population areas of about 350,000.

A team approach ensures patients are treated by specialists who see enough cases to gain the experience needed to make a sound diagnosis. It's only with such specialist teams that tests can be checked and triple-checked to prevent mistakes. Yet those specialist centres have yet to be designated and vast areas of the country are still without any screening services at all . . . be it attached or unattached to a centre.

The Department of Health and HSE needs to stop long-fingering these important decisions and start managing our cancer strategy. Local politics must not get in the way of providing an integrated service. Once a diagnosis and treatment programme is decided, where medically feasible, it should be possible for it to be administered near the patient's home.