Dr. Jenny Mack:

I can take that question first and try to come back to the previous question as well. The context for the PEACE-Air Partnership is that there are ten partners across the island of Ireland. There are academic partners from a lot of the universities and the councils. We are the health partner and we are really pleased to be representing health across the island of Ireland in this initiative.

We have been given what sounds like quite a large pot of money to work with over the next three and a half years on collecting research and looking at the impacts on air quality and health in relation to primarily solid fuels, air pollution from vehicles and traffic as well as agriculture. We will be looking at very broad areas of society across the island of Ireland. The data we will collect will have a legacy in the sense that we are forming partnerships between our institutions. Obviously, once the work comes to an end, the funding will come an end but those relationships will continue. Part of the work will be setting up North-South committees and relationships so we can have theses conversations about air quality and health and have defined forums where we can have those knowledge exchanges with the research we are developing.

Once we have collected the data, one of the things we will be looking at is the influence of particulate matter on health and the impact on mortality to build on the research done by the British and Irish Heart Foundations a few years ago. I would like to be able to use that data to then inform different committees, whether the committees on health or on environment, after the project has finished as to how this data can transform policy to protect health going forward. The Senator is right in the sense that we have been able to come together and collaborate on this work through this particular pot of funding, and that is a concern when looking forwards.