Professor William Gallagher:

I support what Professor Lawler said in that we have a very exciting, burgeoning SME sector, both north and south of the Border, in the life sciences arena. One of the challenges is the scaling of those entities and bringing them to that next level. Commonly, they are acquired by some third party in the US and do not really develop within an Irish context so those jobs are lost in Ireland, in a sense, or there is no potential for them to grow. We need to change that. We need to create a proper ecosystem where people and talent are retained within Ireland such that these can grow and flourish. That is critical.

We have some excellent examples of people who are at the forefront. For example, a company called Carrick Therapeutics spans Dublin and Oxford. A couple of years ago, it got the highest amount of series A funding for any kind of new company. The first seed investment in the company was close to $100 million. That company, which has bases in Ireland and Oxford, has now just completed clinical trials that are the first in-person studies for its agent. The challenge for that type of company is how it goes to that next level, such as the new Almac. We want to create more Almac entities within an Irish context. We have to have that system and the people on the ground.

I am fortunate to be deputy director of a programme called Precision Oncology Ireland, which is one way we are addressing that issue at the moment. It is half-funded by Science Foundation Ireland and half by the industry sector that, importantly, includes six cancer charities in Ireland. It is unprecedented that six cancer charities came together. This is a strategic research partnership in the order of €12 million for a five-year research programme. I will give one concrete example of a North-South project that came out of that, which is a collaboration between Professor Tracy Robson in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, who is an expert in cancer biology, and a spin-out from Queen's called pHion Therapeutics, which developed really sophisticated and cool ways of delivering drugs. This project combines the expertise of the academic in cancer biology with this novel technology. That can only be done with this kind of mechanism.

Ms Mulroe will comment on one last example of cancer trials and cost savings analysis.