David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am not interested in the history because the history speaks for itself: it is appalling. Obviously, there was pushback from the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, which in and of itself was unacceptable, and I do not accept the reasons it gave for pushing back. In any event, we are not even at the starting line. The Department is bringing forward a Bill which is very worthy but useless unless we have the systems that can deliver it. A basic starting point is electronic health records. That is one of the very basic systems we need, yet we were told only a few months ago that we are only at the starting line or not even at the starting line. What I am asking today is where we are with a business case for electronic health records.