Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this opportunity to have an update on the island unit. The civic forum and civil engagement were mentioned. Other than the ongoing dialogue, what has been progressed in this area? What structures make up the agenda of engagement in the future? I very much welcome the fact that the unit is looking at opening it out because I think this committee has an important role to play in taking part in these discussions. I do not know if there would be any impediment to our doing this. I tried to access one of them and it was extremely difficult. We should not all be reinventing the wheel and adding to each other's work, given that the members of this committee have key interests. For example, I am interested in the future of education on the island and the work that we are doing in that regard.

Last week we had representatives of the all-island cancer research institute before the committee. I know it is making a submission to the North-South research programme. Its mission is to establish a fully integrated approach to cancer research and its aim is to establish a virtual institute focusing on bringing together cancer researchers across the island. We spoke the last day about how it is best for the Government to fund the hard things to fund and the researchers will do the rest. This often refers to the research infrastructure and the architecture that is needed to share all this information so that we really get the value out of research that we need and we are not just doing paper exercises and so on. Will Ms O'Donoghue tell us if the unit has given any consideration to the role it can play to help to bring about this infrastructure both for data and the other things that will be needed for the research to have an all-island collaborative approach? I have several other questions but I will leave it at that so I can get an answer.