Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Our job today is to try to find out why on earth we seem to be incapable of delivering a proper modern e-health programme within the health service. It is so fundamental to everything about the health service. If we are serious about reform and serious about introducing the Sláintecare programme, we just have to get this right. We have to find out why has it not been got right for so many years. Where does the problem lie? In August 2022, HIQA said that we have a huge mountain to climb to reach any kind of EU standard in this. There have been various promises over the years, but it is just impossible to understand why on earth we are such laggards and why we are so far behind in this strategy. I am not necessarily pointing the finger at Mr. Thompson, because I do not know where the fault lies. We had the 2015 plan. That was supposed to be implemented and funded fully. I think the price tag was just under €900 million. It was €895 million or something like that, if I recall correctly. This has been gone into in considerable detail within the Sláintecare considerations. There was an urging to accelerate the implementation of this and to do it over five years rather than ten years. Can the witness tell us what strategy he is working to at the moment? Is it the 2015 strategy?