Mr. Robert Watt:

Dr. Holohan had a conversation with a number of institutions, including University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin, to explore the issue. The general principle was that it was a good idea to try to enhance public health research across many different Departments and across our universities, where we have good people. The notion was to ask how we could galvanise all that support and inter-institutional collaboration to have better research and understanding to better prepare ourselves for the next pathogen that might arise. We felt, given Dr. Holohan's great experience as CMO at the Department of Health for 14 years and in dealing with the pandemic, that he would be ideally placed to lead. That was the motivation behind that.