Ms Laura Magahy:

I will answer the Deputy's other questions and will also supplement Mr. Sullivan's response.

There is €147 million of funding in the budget for implementing the national strategies and expert reviews. That includes the implementation of the trauma centre system and investment in the national ambulance service, which will be linked to it. That is good, because the work can now progress with some money behind it.

The Deputy mentioned the creation of registers. I am pleased to say that one of the innovation projects that we have funded is to create a register for diabetes, which we have not had before. It is being compiled at the moment. In the context of registers for other conditions, it is interesting that the Deputy referenced the Asthma Society of Ireland because it is represented on the Sláintecare advisory council. In discussion with the Asthma Society of Ireland and others, it is recognised that sometimes people have many chronic illnesses. For example, they may not just have asthma but also heart failure issues or diabetes. I am told that the difficulty in creating individual registers is the issue of people being on multiple registers. With the roll-out of the individual health identifier, however, that can be streamlined. There will not be a need for individual registers for individual conditions; there will be an individual health identifier, so the condition can be linked to the person, which is better than just having a register. With the agreement with the GPs and in the context of their management of chronic disease, which is paid for, we will be beginning the data collection process with them. The opportunity to roll out this chronic disease register is part of that work and has already been agreed.

The issue of Healthy Ireland is interesting because it is clearly operating, physically, through primary care centres through the Making Every Contact Count initiative. However, it is also operating at a wider level through local authorities. Almost every local authority now has a Healthy Ireland co-ordinator and plan. As recently as yesterday we were talking with the local authorities about a resilience campaign relating to mental and physical health, which will be coming on stream before the end of the year. In the context of the area-based disadvantage approach to Healthy Ireland whereby certain people are particularly disadvantaged, there is specific funding in place for a very exciting programme that can be implemented and rolled out next year.

There are now 135 primary care centres operational around the country. Many of them are top of the range, new infrastructure and will house the more than 2,000 primary care staff who will be recruited next year. There are great opportunities to link health and well-being. In terms of prevention it is about keeping people well in the community through primary care centres and GPs and avoiding hospital through chronic disease management in the community.