Ms Eilísh Hardiman:

I want to be absolutely crystal clear. What we have at the moment is a patient administration system. That is a basic foundation system with the patients' data and information on it. What we are going out to procure is an electronic healthcare record. That is a different system that has all of the clinical notes. It also has all of the medications. It can combine their X-rays and all of their lab feedback. It also allows the clinicians to order electronically their diagnosis of the investigations. It is a very different system.

As the Secretary General outlined, we have developed a business case. So it has been through the HSE. As with any major ICT project in health, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has a peer review process. We have been before this peer review independent group three times this year. It interrogates the business case, the costs, independent of the Department or the HSE and reports back up to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. We have been through those three meetings. The final one was only last week and we hope to get a positive indication to go out to procure after that.