Ms Suzanne Costello:

I will hand over to my clinical colleagues in a moment. There are two reasons that we may not see as barriers but perhaps have a lack of emphasis. As I said earlier, there is plenty of scope for this to happen but we lack a roadmap, a framework, a vision or a strategy for public health that could sit within the Good Friday Agreement or be derived from it. Without that, it is hard to go forward. There is a lot of energy, interest and agreement, but we need to have a roadmap. We need to have a joint statement on how we would address this. It does not have to be an enormous upfront investment; a pilot would be sufficient to start it.

There are practical ways of doing it. I might take a moment to highlight one of the existing frameworks we use, which is not that well known. The North-South alcohol policy advisory group, which is convened at the behest of both chief medical officers and hosted by the IPH, is where civil servants working in the area of alcohol policy across different Departments come together to share information, to discuss policy alignment and to learn from one another. That is one of the things that is sometimes overlooked when we look at North-South policy. Again, we are just in alignment and we are not doing it together, but we do learn a great deal from one another. Sometimes, when we compare things, we point out that one side not being as good as the other but, as a colleague in Northern Ireland said to me, we are actually pushing each other to be better on each occasion. One goes forward and the other tries to match that. That is only a good thing. With regard to the data set, certainly from the public health side, there is probably universal acknowledgement that it is required.

What is very valuable to us in coming to a committee like this today is to be able to talk about the fact that we need a roadmap to do it. We are all the time working to national strategies, objectives and action points set out by the Departments of Health and other Departments. To set out the roadmap towards that would enable everyone to follow on that path. I think that is the impetus that is needed, but my colleagues may want to add to that.