Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Neither Professor Keane nor Ms Magahy raised any frustrations with me. The first I was aware of any such concerns was when their resignations happened. If I may, I want to finish my point on the substance of the issue. If we are asking whether there was resistance to change, the question we must ask is whether change was and is happening. The report I have from the executive director states that not only is change happening but, in the case of more than 97% of the projects, they are either on track or on track with minor issues. The next question we must ask is how substantial the progress has been on the three remaining issues, because those issues matter a great deal. What I see on e-health is that Ireland is a laggard, but substantial innovation happened during the Covid period. We now have telemedicine and e-prescribing, which we were told could not be done. We have unique patient identifiers for the first time because of the vaccine programme. Much more needs to happen on e-health but substantial progress was made.