Dr. Jenny Mack:

I thank the Deputy for his questions. In the institute, I work as a public health consultant. Part of my role is acting as a supervisor for public health specialist trainees. We only relaunched our training programme in February this year. Two trainees from Northern Ireland joined us, one on a project-based attachment, looking at skin cancer prevention, and the other on a six-month full attachment. I will come to Dr. Kavanagh, who is also a registered trainer. Specialist training at that level, when you are ultimately going into a consultant position, is quite intense. A lot of rigour is required. We would not have people joining us en masse. We would take one trainee at a time. In general, we need to increase the workforce in public health when we consider all the challenges coming down the line, especially when we think about the wider pieces, such as climate change and all the rest.

When we think about public health, there are different domains within it. There is health protection, service development, screening and health improvement. When we think about health improvement, there is the implementation side, including the smoking cessation services and weight management support. What we do is quite specific. It is looking at all the different policies and how health fits in. At the minute on the island of Ireland, IPH is the only provider of that type of health improvement policy specialist training. It would be fantastic if we could increase our capacity on that. The end goal for me is being able to have a trainee from Northern Ireland and Ireland at the same time. There is a benefit to that in terms of improving North-South collaboration with specialty public health doctors and others who are not from a medical background, and the learning that can come from that. At the moment, we are just starting. We are small and can accommodate only one trainee or two trainees at a time. The training programmes are also interested in increasing the capacity for North-South working. There is an annual training day whereby the registrars, the specialist trainees, from both jurisdictions come together and the IPH has been present at those to provide teaching on informing policy and legislation. We contributed to the sale of alcohol Bill in 2018. We are able to provide that specific expertise.

We would love to grow it as well.