Cian O'Callaghan: “This includes public patients with cancer. An early cancer diagnosis can save a life. Delayed diagnosis can be fatal.”

The hospital has a deal in place to do lab work for a private hospital.

It takes place at weekends because of the way CUMH and the Rotunda operates their rosters.

Next week's budget needs to address what he described as the "repeated failure" of recent governments to help wider society and those most in need.

A quarter of all work carried out at the Galway University Hospital lab comes from the private hospital Bon Secours.