Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for attending this morning. Is it not an awful indictment that there is more known about each one of our cars through the national car test database than there is about our public health?

If I look up 141 CE 122, which is the registration number of my Honda car, I can see that much more is known about the wear and tear on the front right tyre and the wishbone joint than there is about my personal health or that of anyone else in the country. A person with whom I have been engaging a lot in my office exemplifies this. They recently had a hospital stay. The stay was quite good and they got a good level of care. On the day of discharge when the family came to take the person home, there was a warm "thank you" in the corridor before they got into the car. In passing, this elderly person said it was the third health battle they had won in recent years, as they had overcome cancer. All the jaws dropped because nobody there had known this patient had had cancer. Even though it is clear how relevant that is to a patient's medical history, it was not known. Perhaps it was in some file that had not been dusted down or brought over. It is so cumbersome. It is wrong that there is more known about scooters, cars, trucks and vans than there is about our personal health.

The HSE officials have spoken about the strategy going forward and many members have asked where that is at, but I want to know about the here and now. Until the HSE gets this electronic records system fully operational, where are all the paper records stored? If somebody has been living within the curtilage of the Saolta Hospital Group but then moves down the UL Hospitals Group, does that record come with them? What sharing of records between hospital groups is there? What is there already, or is there any uniformity at all?