Mr Muiris O'Connor:

I am not aware of the particular workplace planning information technology system to which the Senator refers. I have been in the Department for one year. The issue of the multiplicity of different information technology systems throughout the health and social care sector is of major concern. As I indicated previously, it is highly fragmented and the systems do not even speak to each other. Since the adoption by the Government in 2013 of the national e-health strategy, serious and significant steps have been taken to ensure a much more co-ordinated, sensible and mainframed approach to investments in information and communications technologies, ICT. We have the appointment of a chief information officer in the HSE, Richard Corbridge, who addressed the joint committee recently. E-health Ireland has been established with an independent advisory group and includes key experts from jurisdictions that are far ahead of Ireland in terms of investments in information technology. A knowledge and information plan has also been developed.

Increasingly, what is happening under the office of the chief information officer in the HSE is that national systems are being rolled out instead of local, fragmented individual investment in technology. For example, we have seen a national system that allows general practitioners to make electronic referrals to hospitals. We have seen a national system being rolled out across hospitals that allows them to get back to general practitioners with notes, test results and notifications. There is a national approach to digitisation of medical issues. It makes no sense to do these types of things independently because they are extremely expensive and the systems frequently do not communicate with other.

We share the Senator's concerns about the inadequacy of the technology base. It suffered from under-investment over the past decade. We have much to learn from other countries, including Denmark and Belgium. The United Kingdom has chopped and changed in this area and we can learn a great deal both from its mistakes and what has worked. We are paying attention to all of that.

We cannot expect to replicate in multiple sites the type of technological security that is required of any of these systems in terms of data protection and legislative and legal security, and the governance around that. It is necessary to achieve a standardisation of the governance arrangements and this is provided for in the health information and patient safety legislation with the HIQA standards that will be imposed on prescribed resources. The Bill also progresses the e-health agenda through its specifications in respect of interoperability and data management standards.

We can look into the specific workforce planning tool that fell off the radar and revert to the Senator on the matter. However, the case he raises is illustrative of a broader concern of fragmentation that we are genuinely trying to address. The establishment of the division I head up reflects the Department's appreciation of the need to pull together the different functions relating to information, analytics, research and, crucially, information technology. I also have responsibility for international engagement, academic engagement and enterprise engagement. This reflects the need to learn from outside the public health system with regard to how best to implement some of these systems.

Mr. Lennon will address the issue of due diligence in practice.