Ms Eibhlin Mulroe:

My mother would love to hear that, having crossed the Border every day to work as a nurse in the North. With regard to the question on an all-Ireland health service, something we have learned as a group is to pick the low-hanging fruit. I do not know whether we will be able to drive that agenda forward but I like the style. The one thing we can all agree on is we need more people in our health services on both sides of the Border. I spent a lot of time with Professor Richard Wilson when he was in the Northern Ireland cancer trials unit. I also worked with Dr. Melanie Morris and Professor Stuart McIntosh We have shared challenges with regard to people and protected time in our clinical research. The doctors, nurses and dieticians doing this research and trials while working with patients need to have time to do it. We do not have enough of these people. There is no point in protecting time to do research if people do not have that time. Patient care is always going to be the first port of call. We need a shared approach on the island to build a culture of research and to increase the number of people working in our hospitals. It is like a chicken and egg. If we provide a research-rich environment in hospitals, people from all over the world will want to work here because of it: not just Irish people who want to come home but others. We will attract them in. We have to have an all-island approach to this and to building this culture.

The committee has Cancer Trials Ireland's report on our protected time event and research retreat in May. Colleagues in Cancer Trials Ireland around the table who work in clinics have had a very tough 18 months. It has been very challenging for the patients, doctors and nurses in the system. We provided all of this through a ransomware attack and the pandemic, and we are all still talking about the value of research and the importance of it. It is still a priority for everyone. People in the system are tired. It has been tough. I do not know whether our colleagues in the North know a lot about the ransomware attack but it was as challenging as the pandemic for some of the sites involved. They had to try to continue to provide care as well as carry out research with no Internet, computers or phones. This was the reality. We owe a debt of gratitude to all of those people who soldiered through a very difficult 18 months. That was a particular blow. I admire the vision in the question and we definitely need to pick the steps we can achieve. It is about the culture and putting more people into the health services on both sides.