Ms Avril Daly:

There is funding for rare diseases research. There is a matching funding process through the medical research charities group and the Health Research Board. It is important to mention that we have not received that funding this year. We are I hope going to receive it next year, but that means that €1 million has not been put the research into rare diseases this year.

In the context of the relationship between common diseases and rare diseases, a lot of common diseases, particularly in the case of cancer and heart disease, are being broken down into rare conditions because we are beginning to understand and characterise them better. We need to understand better that what we are talking about is how we are going to provide care to meet future needs. What we now consider to be rare conditions are going to have an impact on how we provide care in treating more common diseases.