Professor William Gallagher:

I can give the Deputy a practical example. There is a very nice programme which has just been funded by Breakthrough Cancer Research, a charity that devotes pretty much all of its money to cancer research. It is mainly based in Cork but now funds all-island projects and has recently provided funding for a North-South collaboration in the area of oesophageal cancer and researching before a patient gets this cancer. One of the precursor syndromes is Barrett's oesophagus acid reflux and a percentage of those patients may go on to get oesophageal cancer. There is a pre-existing Barrett's registry led by Professor John Reynolds out of St. James's Hospital and a similar one in Northern Ireland. Leading registries and researchers are aligning, both North and South, on this programme. It is led by Professor Jacintha O'Sullivan and Professor Juliette Hussey in Trinity College Dublin and then Professor Helen Coleman in Queen's University Belfast. It is a great model. It is trying to identify at-risk individuals before they get cancer and look at impactive exercise-based interventions to mediate cases. We are talking about drugs and about other interventions that can be brought in and have an impact to reduce progression events. There are also cases of individuals who are potentially at risk in terms of inherited forms of certain types of cancer which it may be possible to modulate by using exercise-based interventions. I refer to the work of Professor David Gallagher, who works on the medical side in the area of genetics in Ireland.