Kate O'Connell (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Naughton mentioned electronic prescriptions and I am very interested to hear more about where we are with this. Reference is often made to a push pull system with prescriptions. Where are we with regard to patient choice in Ireland? A family member is a pharmacist in the Netherlands and in that country a defined number of patients are directed to a particular community pharmacy setting so an element of choice is removed. As a community pharmacist, I am quite interested hear where we are with this. With regard to the Department of Social Protection, recently I received an identifier card with a chip. A chip seems outdated at this stage. If we are to integrate systems, is it true to say the card will be defunct?

If there is to be one number identifier per patient, it seems somewhat bizarre that the social protection card would not be used. Why not simply have one card for everything? As for spending in this regard, I may have missed this at the outset but technology moves so quickly that when something like this is being done over the next ten years, is the ability to adapt to changes that happen in the technological world being factored in? It is great to see the savings in these few projects. Perhaps I am missing it but does the Health Service Executive, HSE, have data showing the savings made when this is done whereby, for example, if one invests €10 million, one will save €20 million over ten years or whatever? Are such data available because significant amounts appeared to have been saved already?