Mr. Tony O'Brien:

The HSE was established on 1 January 2005. When I last appeared before the committee we spoke on a number of occasions about the absence of enterprise-wide information communications technology, ICT, solutions, which has been a feature of the life to date of the Health Service Executive. We are examining, both for the purposes of the HSE for the remainder of its life and for the purposes of the health sector beyond the HSE, the appropriate solutions to enable good extraction of data. With regard to the degree of confidence we have about the estimates, I will ask my colleague Mr. Barry O'Brien to comment on that.