RICHARD Boyd Barrett – the provocative TD for People Before Profit in the Republic of Ireland – announced today that he will step back from politics following his diagnosis and ongoing treatment for throat cancer.
The 58 year-old made the announcement on RTÉ’s ‘Today with Claire Byrne’ programme, telling the host: “I wanted to take the opportunity to say I recently got a cancer diagnosis and I found out a few weeks ago.
“I have to enter into a fairly intense period of cancer treatment over the next… couple of months probably. All in all, we could be talking three or four months.
“I wanted to explain it because if I just disappeared, people, the constituents who elected me, would be wondering where I’m gone, so I wanted to do them the service of telling them.
“The people who voted for People Before Profit deserve to know if I’m not around and I just want to stress, I plan to be back as soon as possible.”
The Dáil-elected TD said that he first noticed swelling in his neck area whilst he was shaving. “They suspected that it was cancer,” he explained. “They had to do an operation, a biopsy, I ended up having to get my tonsils taken out and they found that I had throat cancer that was prompted by the HPV virus.”
Mr Boyd Barrett said that he was told by doctors that the initial virus was ‘probably picked up years ago’, activated either because of age, stress, a weakened immune system, or a combination of all three.
The TD said: “According to the doctors, when it [the cancer] is virus-induced, it does improve your chances of recovery. The doctors have said that it is very curable, so I have a good chance.
“It’s been caught relatively early because it was in my tonsils, it’s gone to my lymph nodes but no further, so I have to get radio and chemotherapy, and they say the chances of that working are about eight or nine out of ten, which is good.
“Obviously you could be unlucky, and be the one in ten or the two in ten that it doesn’t work for, so you have to throw everything at it.”
Mr Boyd Barrett said that his constituency office in Dún Laoghaire will remain open during his time away, and that retired People Before Profit TD Bríd Smith will be stepping in to assist with the transition.
