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

I welcome the witnesses before the committee again.

That is and interesting point because those involved in the EU work have also struggled with who is a data holder and who would have access to data, particularly where it overlaps with things like wellness apps. There is a very live conversation in the US on this at the moment. Obviously, wellness apps, which are proprietary, contain very important information for some people with conditions like diabetes and obesity. We might return to that at some stage. From this morning's conversation, I am very aware that the departmental officials are only able to do what they are able to do in the scope of what their job is and that other people are involved in the e-health issue.

I want to return to the schedule and I have a particular reason for doing so. As we heard in a number of other sessions, it was all agreed between 2014 and 2016. The original business case was put forward in 2018 and 2019. That business case has been linked to the completion of the national children's hospital. During those sessions we discussed in great detail that the children's hospital is not quite complete yet and it would probably need to be operational before we can prove through a business case that this will all work. In the most favourable case, that would be at the end of 2024 or 2025. The officials can stop me if I am getting the timeframe wrong. This means it would be 2025 before we could have a reasonable expectation that the programme could be linked to a business case, which would then go to the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform. Mr. Thompson advised that the completion of the business case, procurement and roll-out across all facilities would take between five and seven years. That timeframe brings us to 2032. I know this is not all on the desks of the officials present.

When we are talking about e-health as it relates to this Bill, we are talking about proprietary programmes. Nobody in the Department of Health is writing the code for e-health or for wellness apps. Nobody expects them to do that. They are all proprietary items. Under that timeframe, with the business case at the end of 2024 or 2025, procurement happening in 2026 or 2027, followed by roll-out, in the best case scenario, we are looking at up-to-date technology that is current in 2027 or 2028.

Would the officials consider the stagnation that we are seeing on e-health a barrier to the development of legislation like this? This is not technology that we make. This is technology we buy from a private entity. Given the work in the EU and developments in e-health, I can only imagine that the landscape will look very different in 2027. That is at least four years away. In that other session, my version of the timeline was being described as ambitious. I understand the officials are laying down principles about how it will work. Given that we have no idea what that technology will look like - technology is moving so fast at the moment- is there concern about the relevance of this Bill? I understand that it will be useful on a number of fronts, but is there a concern as it relates to e-health?