Professor Brendan McAdam:

To clarify, we have the national heart attack programme which collects data for people having heart attacks. That goes to the regional centres for procedures to relieve open arteries and prevent further damage to the heart. That is the data we have and it is quite good. It has been collected for the past five years under NOCA. However, that is only one third of the types of heart attack that people suffer. There is another type of heart attack called non-ST-elevation, a different type of heart attack that is much more common and occurs in all the hospitals of the country. We have no data at all on that. We talk about heart failure and there is very limited and fragmented data on that. We have data from St. Vincent’s University Hospital and other units but it is very fragmented. We have no national data on what is going on in Sligo, Kerry or Tipperary for example.