Mr. Tony O'Brien:

A fully functioning system, in the absolute sense of the word, is a five to ten year horizon. Part of the reason for that is we are not going to follow the example of some of the other jurisdictions where they sought to go with big bang implementations which ultimately failed.

To use jargon, this is what is known as tactical modular implementation, whereby one builds on things that already work. It is about joining up systems that already exist, for example, Healthlink, which many general practices have, and in-hospital systems, supplementing them and using the individual health identifier to make that information trackable. This is more likely to be successful. We are investing €50 million per year in e-health, but that will need to accelerate because it is not yet fully funded. We will-----