Ms Eibhlin Mulroe:

Good man. That is great, and I thank the Deputy. It is important to reflect on the fact that the HRB is a research funder. It is also a State body with its own board, and the board made the decision to cut our funding by 20% after the overall budget for the HRB was reduced. However, the HRB funds research, which is what the 45 people in CTI do. The least qualified person in our office has a masters in translational oncology. It is not one bit intimidating. These are the people who write protocols, monitor safety, quality and training, and engage in pharmacovigilance, covering all of the processes required in clinical trials for Irish patients to be safe. That is expensive, and it is here where the HRB should be focused. It is where the trials start and are monitored and it is from where the research ideas of people like Professor Hennessy come. Consider the employment of research staff at hospital sites, including research nurses and data managers, and countries that do that well. Denmark is akin to us. Yesterday, I spoke to one of my colleagues in the Health Research Board-Clinical Research Co-ordination Ireland, HRB-CRIC. Denmark is recruiting four times the number of people onto cancer trials than we are because it has integrated the budget line item for research staff in cancer units into hospitals. The situation in the NHS is the same. We do not have a budget line item for research in the HSE, and we never have had.