Ms Averil Power:

I can answer the question about data. The committee looked at this recently and we all heard the public comments from the gentleman who just resigned from leading up the HSE digital transformation. I am sure the committee discussed electronic patient records last week. They are vital so the data can be captured electronically and is then available to everybody involved in a patient's care. For example, one of the issues in cancer is that people can be treated in different centres. You may have surgery in a centre of excellence but then get radiotherapy through the St. Luke's Radiation Oncology Network separately or in Cork or you may get chemotherapy in your local hospital. There is not even a centralised record for that patient necessarily that is shared across sites. That is a huge challenge. Having the electronic health record put in place urgently is important. It is being piloted but it needs to be put in place so everybody involved in the patient's care has access to their full history. It is also important that decisionmakers can access that information, such as The National Cancer Registry, NCRI, which from a cancer perspective can pull that data in real time, as well as sharing it with policymakers in the Department, the Minister and the committee so they can understand and interrogate what is happening. For us, it being publicly available to the same extent that it is in other countries would be a big move forward so we can have the data to make proper decisions and, frankly, to hold people to account. It also means that people will be held to account. In five years' time we will have the information but those who were leading services or some of the people involved or political leaders will have moved on. You do not have the ability to hold people to account for what is happening either. That is vital. Digitalisation is vital.