Kate O'Connell (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is the Joint Committee on Health - I am not trying to be smart. I imagine most people would agree that Ireland is disproportionately affected and would have a higher percentage of undergraduates and postgraduates in the UK. The argument is constantly being made that we cannot do anything until we know exactly what is going to happen but there are not too many permutations. One is either in the tent or outside the tent. The system is that one graduates in pharmacy in the UK and, having done one's registration year, becomes a member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, getting the same accreditation as here. It widens the pool of professionals and not one person in pharmacy in Ireland would deny that they have learned a lot from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, a story that would be similar across all medical professions. It is a major concern, especially for those currently studying there who had planned their career pathways. This could be dealt with in advance of knowing exactly what was going to happen. Can the Department update the committee on the latest situation in this regard?

I have been thinking about the foot and mouth outbreak, swine flu and various other public health issues.

My father worked in the Department of agriculture during the past two outbreaks of foot and mouth disease and he told me about the amount of work that happened at the Border and the connection between Ireland and the UK in terms of trying to keep the country free of foot and mouth. That was the case also with swine flu. What I am talking about is connected with what Deputy Kelleher said about vaccines. This is about population health and how one deals with such issues when theoretically there might only be a hedge between two countries and viruses are not aware that there is a border.

My fifth question relates to the E111 cards. To clarify, they allow one to receive medical treatment in another EU country. What is the situation in that regard? Have the witnesses considered it?

I fully agree with what Deputy O'Reilly said. She asked how long ago were the data sought on people receiving cross-border health treatment. It seems bizarre that this information would only have been sought in recent weeks and that the question would not have been asked an hour after Brexit was signalled about how many people from here are being treated across the Border or across the Irish Sea. It is not as if we have a population of 50 million. There are not that many of us. I do not blame the witnesses; I blame the HSE. One should be just able to ask the executive and the information should be sent on a spreadsheet. I get very concerned when we cannot get information at the touch of a button or in response to an e-mail from the Department of Health to the HSE. We should be able to find out where 1,700 people are going. It is not 17 million, it is a very small amount of people. That information is significant. To be honest, that is stressing me out a bit because if we do not know that, what are we at?

Has work been done on abortion? I will refer to what was said by Sam Coulter-Smith is a very well known and eminent obstetrician. He said: "I suppose one of the fallouts from the recent potential exit of the UK from the EU is that the freedom of travel may be affected - and that will be something which will be important for this group of patients." I assume he is referring to women who are seeking abortions. Again, we are back to the area of speculation but it is a real issue when we have 70 women a week travelling out of this country to the UK to terminate pregnancies. We generously gave them the right to travel abroad so we would not have to deal with the issue in our country. Has work been done to examine that massive issue, namely, the 70 women a week who are travelling? Are there arrangements in place to try to deal with the issue as best we can if the situation changes?