Professor Mark Lawler:

I will take of the questions and then pass over to the rest of the team. I will speak from the Northern Ireland side on the subject of cancer research and cancer research charities. We work very closely with Cancer Focus Northern Ireland, not only on funding cancer research, but also looking at the outputs of cancer research and feeding that back to Cancer Focus Northern Ireland and the patient advocates involved. I also sit on the board of Cancer Focus Northern Ireland,. We think that a really important part of cancer research is how we feed back the overall results, not just the results of individual patients. People then know what their money is being spent on when it comes to research, and what that leads to. Some of that has led to really important discoveries but has also been translated into the clinic. We feel that is an important part of how that research ecosystem goes all the way from research to its translation. It also feeds that information back to the community. We agree with Mr. Molloy on that.

The second question related to cancer incidences and looking at position North and South. Essentially, both cancer registries work closely together, particularly at the moment. We have funding at the moment to put PhD students and, potentially, a postdoctoral scholar into the two registries to work together. When one looks at the data there are no real differences between the two. There will be slight differences, but none is significant. We are seeing similar data from both registries, but it is not the case that certain cancers are much more common in Northern Ireland as compared with the Republic of Ireland. However, as Professor Gallagher highlighted, it is really important that when we start to look at what happens in different communities in the context of poverty and poor housing, it is quite clear that in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland these are associated with higher incidence. If one looks at the recent study on head and neck cancers, that is what we are seeing. Certain poorer areas of Belfast see much higher levels of head and neck cancers.

It is really important that the two registries work together. Bringing that information together is really important, as is reporting it internationally. Ireland and Northern Ireland are both part of the International Cancer Benchmarking Partnership. That means we are benchmarking what we do with best practice across the world. That is really important. Both have contributed important data to that initiative. We benchmark what we do and compare it, look to improve and sometimes we find issues. For example, we are doing very well on esophageal cancer. On some other cancers, we are not doing as well. One learns and works with the community, because the cancer community is worldwide.