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

I am watching the clock ticking down. I am asking these questions because we on the health committee heard last week that, despite Deputies like me asking parliamentary questions about when we were going to get digital health records, given that they are such an important part of Sláintecare's roll-out, there would only be digital records in the national children's hospital, this hospital or that hospital. That is meaningless unless digital health records are applied nationally. The idea is that a person can take his or her digital health record anywhere. What emerged from last week's meeting was that, in the business case, we had linked the national children's hospital to the roll-out of digital health records. Until they are up and running in the national children's hospital, the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform will not accept the business case.

I want to understand the roll-out of ICT and digital records at the children's hospital. The HSE's position last week was that digital records would be up and running and it could immediately see whether they worked. In real life, though, commissioning does not work like that. Something must be in place for six, 12 or 18 months before we can know whether something has worked. As such, if we have a date of mid-2024 for the children's hospital to be substantially completed and a further six months for commissioning, which would take us into 2025 at the earliest, we would only then see the ICT systems up and working and start looking at a business case and procurement for digital health records across the health service as a whole. I know it is in some hospitals and has been rolled out in respect of maternity services, but by my reckoning, and if all the winds are in our favour, we will only be at the business case and procurement stage at the end of 2025 or start of 2026. That puts us about a decade and a half behind the rest of the EU.

This is not a question for the HSE, which is running the children's hospital. This is more a question for the Department of Health. Has it had any interaction with the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform on linking the roll-out of digital health records to the children's hospital? Even in 2018 when the latter Department first refused to move ahead, we knew that the children's hospital project would go way over time.