Mr. Odhrán Allen:

I think so. Before the establishment and introduction of civil partnership for gay and lesbian couples, this is an issue that used to come up all of the time for people because next of kin is not defined in law. The Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Act 2010 has been hugely helpful in clarifying that. It has also added a cultural shift, that increasingly will take whoever the person states is his or her next of kin as his or her next of kin.

It is also useful to put on the record that there was an interesting piece of research carried out. It was funded by the Irish Hospice Foundation and the Irish Cancer Society, and GLEN and the HSE supported it. Dr. Paul D'Alton was very involved in this. They produced an excellent report called, "Five Things You Need to Know". It was based on a pilot training project carried out in palliative care and oncology services.

Staff are invited to participate in very short and intensive training for a period of 45 minutes, either before work or at lunchtime. This was pre and post-evaluated and it was deemed to be a very effective way of helping people to overcome language barriers and knowledge gaps. Perhaps Dr. D'Alton might say a few words on that matter in the context of services.