The National Cancer Registry Ireland (NCRI) is pleased to announce its updated statistics on cancer incidence, mortality and survival for patients diagnosed with cancer in Ireland 1994 – 2019. Key findings include:

• Indications of substantial progress being made to control the four major cancers (prostate, breast, lung and colorectal), which comprise over half of all invasive tumours (other than the common but rarely fatal non-melanoma skin cancers).
• Mortality rates falling or stabilising for these four major cancers, and incidence rates falling for both lung and colorectal cancers.
• Five-year net survival averaging 65% for cancer patients diagnosed between 2014 and 2018, a substantial increase from twenty years previously, when 42% was the average.
• The number of cancer survivors living through or after cancer treatment in Ireland continuing to increase, year on year. At the end of 2019, there were nearly 200,000 patients living after a cancer diagnosis.
• Definitive statistics are not yet available on the impact of COVID-19 on numbers of cancers diagnosed, but there are clear signals that, as expected, the number of cancers diagnosed in 2020 is lower than in previous years.
  
  

P.3 Earlier detection (including through screening) and better treatments are most likely contributing to the fall in cancer mortality while the sustained efforts of those involved in primary cancer prevention, in particular tobacco control, are key factors in the reduction in cancer incidence rates. However, the incidence of breast cancer in females is rising significantly since 2014, and prostate cancer in males is also increasing marginally since 2015. Improved detection methods and many aspects of our daily life such as diet, overweight and obesity, alcohol and exercise, are likely influences on the increase in these cancers.