Professor William Gallagher:

That is music to my ears. We have some mechanisms, such as the shared island unit. From a research perspective, it has a North-South research programme but there is a challenge there. It was great that, in the first round, more than one third of the funding went to cancer projects, which had a great impact on our early activities. However, the funding is not dedicated to any particular area and instead goes across all areas of science and the humanities. While we were initially successful, we did not get subsequent funding, probably because we had already received some significant funding. That pot of funding is not just for research. It is also for infrastructure and other things. It requires champions. It needs some political support underpinning that to push projects forward. It is very important that we identify political champions for what we are doing and progress these ideas. I am always mindful of former President Biden and his cancer moonshot and political imperative. At a European level, cancer is very important. You have got Europe's leading cancer plan, the EU Cancer Mission. We play reasonably well as part of those programmes but we are underparticipating in Ireland. With the UK back in that, there is a big opportunity.

We need to look at the mechanisms. There are some but we need more or a tailoring of the existing mechanisms towards bespoke opportunities and demonstrators in particular spaces.