Ms Laura Magahy:

I completely agree with everything the Chairman has said. This issue is absolutely critical. The e-health office is currently involved in a dialogue to see how quickly a shared care record can be put in place. The results of this dialogue, which is currently ongoing with ten companies, will be produced by the end of this year. This will offer a direction and enable us to use what we have. We have had this conversation before. There is already an awful lot of data, including data from the primary care reimbursement service, PCRS, GP data which will hopefully come on stream, patient administration system, PAS, data from the hospital system and data on radiology from the national integrated medical imaging system, NIMIS. There is an awful lot of system data. We now need a platform that can get these data sets to talk to each other. That is different to the electronic health record, which has already been rolled out in some of the maternity hospitals and St. James's Hospital. The shared care record is more urgent and more applicable from the patient's perspective. Good progress is being made but a real focus will be needed next year. The capital plan includes a budget for that. I know that every effort is being made through Mr. Sullivan's good offices to make that happen.