'The children were counted—but the timing that brought families to that meeting was invisible'
A Mid Ulster father has asked Health Minister Robbie Butler to appoint someone independent of the handling to date to assess the full cancer concern reported by families.
Hugh McCloy, whose daughter Freda was diagnosed with leukaemia in 2023, made the request during a recent two-hour meeting, accompanied by Patsy McGlone MLA and Councillor Denise Johnston.
Mr McCloy said the Minister referred to a threshold for commissioning an independent assessment, but said he needed to check when asked to specify it.
“Families need that threshold explained in writing, alongside a decision and a timetable,” Mr McCloy said. “I was sitting with the Minister, senior health civil servants, public health leaders and cancer specialists. Yet I still had no clear answer to the question I raised 15 months earlier: had the full concern reported by families actually been assessed?”
The October meeting followed a July briefing on which former Minister Mike Nesbitt relied when offering reassurance. A subsequent FOI response confirmed that briefing was verbal, with no documents or hard-copy presentations. Mr McCloy is asking what evidence supported reassurance about the full concern reported for 2023–2025.
Speaking first, Mr McCloy traced the concern from his observations on the children’s cancer ward through reports, correspondence and Freedom of Information disclosures. He then questioned a graph in the August 2026 assessment covering childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia across Mid Ulster Parliamentary Constituency during 2019–2023.
“I asked the room: ‘Does anyone know how many cases are behind that graph?’ Nobody answered.
“I had worked backwards through the report’s statistics to establish that the figure represented three children. Separately, I knew the cases and their diagnosis dates. All three were diagnosed in summer 2023.
“The graph combined four years without a diagnosis with the year containing all three. The five-year total was below the Northern Ireland average, but it did not show that concentration.
“The children were counted, but the timing that brought families to that meeting was invisible. A parent should not have to reconstruct the statistics and already know the children with cancer to make that pattern visible.”
Mr McCloy said he was also reporting lymphomas, sarcomas and brain tumours among children and young people in neighbouring communities during 2023–2025. Historical Registry figures recorded 14 cancers among people aged 0–24 across Moyola and Magherafelt over the preceding ten years.
“My question was whether these diagnoses, happening so close together within such a short time, were unusual for our area. A five-year total alone cannot answer that.”
He also questioned the explanation that cancer was rising generally. Figures supplied to Cara Hunter MLA in AQW 49505/22-27 showed cancer registrations increasing by 19% in Mid Ulster and 32% in Derry City and Strabane between 2018 and 2022.
“These are all-age counts, not proof of a childhood cluster. But saying cancer is rising generally leaves the essential questions unanswered: where is it rising, which cancers, and among whom?”
He asked asked how a previous PHA planning response recognising potential health effects from airborne pollution had informed the assessment, and whether air monitoring had been considered
Mr McCloy thanked Patsy McGlone MLA and Councillor Denise Johnston for their continued help and support, and DUP representatives who had raised the issue through Assembly questions.