Ms Eibhlin Mulroe:

I believe his brother is watching us and it would be nice for him to see that we are recognising that today. I will be very brief as I am conscious of colleagues wishing to contribute.

I assure Ms Hanna and everyone here that both Professor Lawler and I sit on the implementation committee of the Ireland Northern-Ireland US consortium and we are very happy to say that the first meeting took place last week. There are Department officials, North and South, on that committee and the cancer strategy from both sides of the Border are well represented on it. We will be complementing the learnings from that with this institute and in what it is trying to do. I know in respect of the Northern Ireland strategy that it would have been nice to have seen a little bit more about trials and research. That is some feedback and having said that, it can be written a strategy but one may not get there, which is what is happening in the Republic of Ireland. We have a target of 6% and we are probably only at 2% of patients on clinical trials and we have a way to go there. Now is the time because we have everyone at the table. As to that committee in the Departments, we have to congratulate the people involved in that, people like Muiris O’Connor and Gay Ireland in the Departments of Health in the South and North respectively, as well as Dr. Bill Dahut from the National Cancer Institute in Washington who are giving their time, expertise and commitment to this.

At the back of all that we have the Shared Island strategy within the Department of the Taoiseach, a key item of which is research. We really see synergies here, everyone is coming together on this, so it is very positive. I will pass back now to our chairman, Professor Gallagher, to see if there are other questions that need to be answered.