The National Cancer Strategy missed six out of its seven targets for 2018.
The Irish Cancer Society has sharply criticised the Government for underfunding the programme.
The strategy is designed to improve cancer prevention rates.
According to the society, new initiatives promised under the strategy have not been resourced.
They're also warning that existing services are being inadequately funded.
Averil Power, CEO of the Irish Cancer Society, said cancer patients deserve the care that was promised to them.
She argued: "This is truly shocking, and will have a major impact on cancer patients and their families.
"One of the six missed targets was to ensure patients are diagnosed earlier, therefore increasing their chances of survival.
"95% of people classified as having breast cancer symptoms needing urgent investigation were supposed to be seen within two weeks, but only 75% of them were."
"We have gone backwards"
Meanwhile, the Cancer Trials Ireland group highlighted funding cutbacks of €750,000 per year.
The charity says that means they've been unable to open clinically important cancer trials.
Prof Bryan Hennessy, clinical lead at the organisation, told the committee that Ireland's performance is actually going backwards.
He observed: "The target... in the National Cancer Strategy to double the number of people with cancer who can access therapeutic cancer trials - from the estimated 3% to 6% by 2020 - would not only have saved the HSE millions of euro in drug costs (€6.5 million 2016), it would provide more patients with access to promising new treatments that would otherwise not be available.
"In 2018 the numbers we have collected so far suggest only 348 patients were newly recruited to therapeutic clinical trials in 2018 and according to the last report by the NCRI there were 22,321 new cases of cancer in the same year.
He explained: "In 2014, the equivalent figure was 664 patients and an incidence of 21,380 which led to calculations of 3% baseline figure. Since 2014 we have dropped to 1.5% on therapeutic trials, we have gone backwards."
