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

It is problematic if the Department is not on top of this and producing the reports when they are promised.

I commend everybody who was involved in the enhanced community care initiative. The results from that have been very positive. It sets out the clear way forward in respect of a key element of Sláintecare, which is switching activity away from the acute hospital sector to the community.

I want to discuss some of the key enablers in respect of the implementation of Sláintecare and, specifically, the RHAs. One of those big ticket items is e-health. We had a committee meeting in January where I believe we were all very taken aback at the very serious lack of progress in e-health. If we are going to move forward in respect of RHAs, that has to be data-driven and, in particular, the population-based resource allocation element of that has to be data-driven, which is so important. We cannot do that if we do not have the data.

In addition, we know the absence of e-health generally and a digitalised system is very much slowing down the system and is also costing the system money. Our committee dug around a bit in that regard, so to speak.

At a January meeting we discovered that the block had been put on e-health in 2018 by the then Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. I do not know if Mr. Watt had a direct role in that, but we have requested the letter to the HSE blocking e-health and the reasons for that. We were told the HSE was advised to wait until the children's hospital was built and that it had a few years' experience with the digitalised system. Incredible advice was given. It is very hard to understand that. Will Mr. Watt explain the current status of the e-health programme? When can we expect to see significant progress on that, given its importance?