Mr. Paul Reid:

On the Deputy's first question on the individual health identifier and electronic health record project, there is no doubt, and the Sláintecare report calls this out, that the areas that are behind are in terms of e-health. As we have been working through various deployments of both the vaccination and testing and tracing programmes, we have been trying to capture information that will contribute significant data to those projects. They are the ones we are behind on in terms of progress and on which we want to put a particular focus.

Particularly in terms of e-health, we will need to recruit expertise. We do not have sufficient expertise in the HSE in particular. The PwC cyber report that we published did point out some deficiencies in some of our skills, which will be part of our recruitment process to strengthen ourselves in that sector.

Finally, I will make a comment on the change management. The Deputy is correct; I am not from a health background. I have been here for two and a half years. We will need to bring in some external expertise. As I said earlier, this is one of the biggest change management processes in a public service body probably in the history of the State and we need to bring expertise in with us. I have also met the team from the Centre for Health Policy and Management at Trinity College Dublin in my early stages.