Dr. Seán Ennis:

I shall continue with the points made about education. One of the things that was not mentioned about Dr. Paul O'Byrne's module is that we are leading Europe on that front so we can make an impact from an Irish perspective.

Let me return to the discussion on whether we are capable of research. In my generation one always had a go at things but when the younger generation tackle these conditions they adopt the view that they can solve the issue and are disappointed if they do not succeed. We have a cohort of individuals that are well able to tackle rare diseases. However, no one country can tackle all 7,000 rare diseases so we collaborate with our colleagues abroad when and where we can. In an Irish context such an environment allows clinicians, scientists, bioinformaticians, etc., to interact and give feedback and is a more natural situation for a small country like Ireland. That environment works very well and there are benefits to be gained from a lot of people knowing each other and from having worked together.

With regard to the cost of €1.5 million, in one sense the figure seems alarming and probably is alarming but not if we are talking about sharing testing with Europe. No one country can have all of the expertise in genetic testing. There are reasons that some genetic tests are sent abroad but some of them can be repatriated to Ireland which would boost the national service.