Áine Collins (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the delegation. We are all very much in favour of cloud. As Ms Hallahan knows, Cork Institute of Technology, CIT, is the only college in the country that has a degree course in cloud technology. As a result, it is retraining quite a lot of people who are going into VMware and EMC, with which I am sure Ms Hallahan is familiar.

When I came into this job two years ago, I was completely frustrated with the cumbersome security and data elements. A few of us wanted to put cloud into the Oireachtas committees, which I thought would be a really good example of how we could let the world know that we had moved on. I believe we will have it within 16 to 18 months. None of us will have laptops or desktop computers then; we will all have iPads.

However, the attitude to change is slow and people seem to be quite afraid of it. It is moving in the right direction but it will take us some time. Ms Hallahan is far more expert in this area than I am, but there are so many areas that would benefit from all of this, including the HSE. It would sort out a lot of efficiencies that we badly need, but which do not seem to be happening. The biggest problem we have is people and their attitudes, including the fear of change and the idea that this will end up losing jobs instead of creating them with better efficiency. I am sure Ms Hallahan has thought about this matter and has researched it, so I wonder if we could publish something on that and discuss it a bit more. People still do not understand much about cloud and they tend to fear it.