Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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428. To ask the Minister for Health if he is satisfied with the level of data that is collected on the issues which come under his Department's remit; the steps he will take to work with the administration in Northern Ireland to collect data under his aegis on a North-South basis; and the budgets he will put in place to undertake this work (details supplied). [14443/16]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I fully recognise the value of health information on an all-Island basis. The Institute of Public Health was established in 1997 as a North-South Body to promote cooperation on public health between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The Institute works to strengthen public health intelligence, build public health capacity and contribute to policy development. The Institute is jointly funded by the Irish and Northern Ireland administrations. The Institute regularly carries out projects on a North South Basis that focus on public health, including lifestyle issues and chronic conditions.

My Department also works closely with Eurostat and the OECD on a range of health information initiatives, in particular population health indicators.

However, I recognise that there are deficits in the health information landscape in Ireland and my Department has recently commenced a review of health information policy generally to identify the best strategic approach to addressing this.

In relation to acute hospital services, a number of cross-jurisdictional acute services have been established in the last 5 years, such as primary percutaneous coronary interventions and radiotherapy services at Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry and the establishment of a Network Board to implement the recommendations of the Expert International Working Group on developing an all-Island model of care for Congenital Heart Disease. Opportunities may exist for further cooperation in areas such as organ donation and transplantation, trauma services, emergency aeromedical services and genomics. As well as benefiting patients through provision of easier access to treatment, such developments afford significant opportunity for the collation of both clinical and demographic information which can inform future health policy and development.