Mr. Jim Breslin:

There will be two channels. A person with a French qualification will automatically be recognised. A person with a UK qualification will not have to undergo the same depth of analysis as a person from a third country with which we have no relationship. There will be a fast-track system but it will differ from the process for holders of EU-recognised qualifications. Our regulators will put back-to-back arrangements in place with their equivalents in the UK to allow that to function.

I refer to the Brexit operation team.

I hope colleagues will have a chance to provide the committee with detail of the importance of that team. The HPRA, the HSE and the Food Safety Authority have been working on this issue for two years and a tremendous amount of work has been done. After Christmas we decided that the cycle of work and the response would speed up considerably to the end of March and beyond. Rather than have meetings every three or four weeks, we need a functional team from across the agencies and the Department which has a leadership and meets every week. In between the weekly meetings, there will be constant bilateral engagement. If the HPRA needs to work with the HSE on a medicine supply issue, it can do so between meetings and report back on the Monday when the operations team convenes again. The Department is providing the leadership for the team to ensure it will all happen in real time. There has been very good collaboration over two years, but we have speeded up its intensity and integrated to a greater extent. It is focusing on the full range of Brexit tasks we will have to undertake under many of the differing headings. It is providing a central point for the agencies to feed into the Department. It is also allowing the Department to feed into central government. When we talk to the Department of the Taoiseach or the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, we will do so having freshly left a conversation with the HPRA, the HSE and the Food Safety Authority and with the most up-to-date information possible. It also permits a joined-up stakeholder engagement and communications piece. On Wednesday last Mr. Goodman led a meeting with medicines stakeholders. It was the full range of the industry, regulators and professionals working in the area. He did so with representatives of the HPRA and the HSE in the room. Everybody heard the same thing at the same time. It is important in responding rapidly to an evolving situation that people move at the same speed. That is the purpose of the Brexit operations team.