Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

As I said to our previous witnesses, I had questions on the operation of data collection, particularly for research and obviously selfishly for our own purposes, the issue around evidence-based design and having that data comes up every week. I want to touch on a number of areas if the business case was happening and if we were at that point. There is an assumption, certainly when we talk to the HSE around this, that it is just the tech system but I want to touch on the staffing and the training aspect and the load that will place on the HSE. For example, I am aware that sometimes there are outpatient clinics with a specialist or nurse practitioner or somebody who then has no administration support. If we are going to do electronic data correctly, we have to input the data to begin with. Can the witnesses outline what they think the load will be across the health system? Will we need additional administration staff or people who are assigned to particular clinics or hospital departments who are tasked with data collection in a particular way and will there be a requirement to roll out training across the board for all front line staff? I read an interesting paper around ethnic research and training people to ask the right questions in a way they were comfortable with and that did not offend the person who was being asked the question. Can they talk a little bit about that and what the load might be in terms of staffing? We may need to see an increase in staffing specifically for correct data collection.