Professor Diarmuid Hegarty:

I can provide comfort to the Senator in that regard. Apart from my day job, I serve on the board of Baggot Street hospital. We administer a small research fund, to the value of €30 million, and fund projects of approximately €1 million a year. One of the things we support is work with TobaccoFree Research Institute Ireland. Most of the research work it has done that we have funded has been social research on the attitude or reaction of people to tobacco advertising. There is a health impact in that regard and it is very much applied, but the research is not on the illness; rather, it is on the social problem causing the impact and that is the inclination to smoke and how that is affected by advertising. The Senator referred to diversity and inclusion. That is getting a fair amount of funding. As an empiricist, I tell people I started out in life as an accountant and a lawyer but I am all right now. I am beginning to think in terms of the importance of humanities.

However, I think research has caught up with that importance. I do not know whether that is any comfort.