Richard Boyd Barrett to step away from politics for a time following cancer diagnosis

Ellen O'Donoghue

People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett has announced he is stepping back from politics for a time as he receives treatment for throat cancer.

Speaking on RTÉ's Today with Claire Byrne on Monday, Mr Boyd Barrett announced the news.

"I wanted to take the opportunity to say I recently got a cancer diagnosis, and I found out a few weeks ago, and I have to enter into a fairly intense period of cancer treatment over the next ... well, it's going to certainly take a couple of months probably. All in all, we could be talking three or four months," he said.

"I need to step back and throw everything at it, recovering."

He said that he would undergo chemotherapy and radiotherapy, adding that the form of cancer is “very curable... I’ve a good chance.”

"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," he said.

"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."

Mr Boyd Barrett said that he had been told that eight or nine of every ten patients with this type of cancer recover.

However, he said that he expected the treatment to be “fairly rough”.

“Eating and drinking can get pretty rough,” he said.

Mr Boyd Barrett said that he had noticed a lump on his neck during the general election campaign in October and had it investigated before Christmas.

“I noticed at the end of October and November, I was actually in the middle of the election campaign, I was shaving and I noticed a swelling in my neck.”

He went to the doctor before Christmas and had his tonsils removed before he was diagnosed with throat cancer caused by human papillomavirus.

“The doctors have said it is very curable, so I’ve a good chance. It’s been caught relatively early, because it was in my tonsil, it has gone to my lymph nodes but no further.

“So I have to get radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and they say the chances of that working are about eight to nine out of 10, which is good, but obviously you could be unlucky.”