Dr. Darrin Morrissey:

I will address aspects of all Deputy Murphy O'Mahony's questions. We acknowledge that cuts were made to the CTI budget over the past number of years. The rationale for this is clearly linked to the diminution in our total funding.

Between 2008 and 2014, the HRB budget on the revenue side shrank from €36.9 million to approximately €30 million. It was a cut of 20% or so. We held off on passing that cut on to CTI for a good number of years, but it was around 2015 onwards when that happened. I am not justifying it in any way, but it needed to happen to allow us to have a balanced portfolio of investment.

The Deputy asked an interesting question about the reason for the increased number of cancer patients. Improved diagnostic measures are a factor, but so is an increased survival rate. The Deputy then extended the question and spoke about cancer prevention. In that context, we have increased our investment in areas of research into diabetes, obesity and lifestyle and links through to the generation of-----