David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our witnesses. If I may, I will start by reading back to Mr. O'Connor some of his opening statement and then agreeing with what he said but also using that as context and backdrop to the Bill being brought forward. His opening statement was quite sobering as to how far behind we are not only on patient data and information sharing but also on IT systems and e-health. He said, "The reality is that, at present, the health information system does not exist at a coherent and co-ordinated national level." We have known about that for a long time, yet we either seem to have pushed back or are reluctant to invest in this area to make sure that the systems are connected, that there is interoperability, at the very least, between systems, which does not exist at present. There was reluctance previously even to accept the use of unique patient identifiers and all the obvious solutions we need. Mr. O'Connor went on to say: "Instead, it operates at organisational level with considerable reluctance to share information." That has to be challenged and broken down. He then said, "When it comes to the private side of the health system, there is an information black hole which wholly undermines any serious attempt at population planning." That might be the case, but I think that could equally be attributed to the public sector, and I will give the committee some examples of that in two seconds. I think the black hole Mr. O'Connor says exists in the private sector also exists in the public sector. In fact, it could be worse in the public sector. He went on to say:

In addition, healthcare lags behind other areas of society with regard to digital innovation. All of that directly adversely impacts on the treatment of patients, on those who provide that care, and on the policy-making and planning processes.

A business case was submitted to the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform on the use of electronic health records. When was it submitted? I refer to the one that was rejected by the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform. What year was that?