Mr. Damien McCallion:

I will open up on one or two of the points and then ask my colleagues, such as Mr. Guckian, to come in on some of the more specific things on Altnagelvin. With regard to the challenges for rural areas, it is interesting in that the whole INTERREG programme is framed on the basis that regions around Europe generally have more deprivation and challenges in terms of employment access to many services, including healthcare.

As the Deputy said, that brings its own challenges in terms of attracting people to certain roles. We had a previous CAWT project in the last round of funding in regard to how we could encourage more people into those rural areas, which is a challenge from Donegal right along the Border corridor. That tried to explore some of the issues and came up with ideas about how we would address it. In this round, it is more specific to projects and we have tried to recruit people. For example, mental health is very challenged in regard to getting access to mental health care professionals. The recovery concept is using people with experience of mental health to support a process but, obviously, under a clinical governance model within mental health services.

One of the things we are looking at for the next round of funding - one of the thematic areas - is to have an initiative. There is a stream within the new programme around professional development and mobility, and also the challenges in some areas. The key themes there will be the issues we all face anyway within our own jurisdictions, given there are not enough people globally to go around for certain disciplines, training numbers and so on. Some of those are issues within the jurisdictions. What we are trying to do is, first, ensure it is easy for people to operate on both sides of the Border, which facilitates mobility, but we are also trying to look at areas where we could identify certain priorities for working. That is one of the areas where we would hope to develop a proposal for PEACE PLUS.

In terms of the specialties on the GP side, specialist training and so on, there is collaboration. Mr. Guckian talked about the Magee medical school but there are big challenges around general practice. We had a couple of small initiatives where pharmacies and GPs did work on out-of-hours services across the Border, whereby some pharmacies could prescribe from Northern Ireland into the South, but they are very self-contained. The point the Deputy makes is a good one which we will take away.

When we look at GP challenges in both areas of the Border counties, we need to ask if there are things that could be done. However, some of those do stray into policy areas. We are very clear that our role is getting healthcare partners to work on the ground to identify areas, and then work with policymakers or with the legal bodies on indemnity and so on in order to resolve those issues. We are not the policymakers but we link in very closely because we are getting feedback from people out there in the real world and in the environment.

I will ask Mr. Guckian to talk around some of the points on the Western Trust.