Dr. Duncan Rogers:

An orthoptists is a particular type of specialist. We have some short-, medium- and long-term strategies we are trying to enact. The long-term strategy is to build, potentially with Technological University Dublin, an orthoptic degree programme where that is pushed out to Ireland from the universities that already do it in the UK. We are also at three sites now where we have orthoptic trainees who are in UK training programmes and who are coming across for a degree of their clinical experience to Ireland so we can showcase what Ireland has to offer. That is in the short term.

I am the only English consultant ophthalmologist I know of in Ireland. It is probably a slight misrepresentation to the committee that one of the four people in front of it is a UK-trained ophthalmologist rather than an Irish one.