Mr. Peter Lennon:

It is a good question. There is a specific provision in the Bill around the duty to share information. Going forward there will be a legal obligation on anybody providing care or treatment to an individual to share that information with another health service provider providing that care or treatment. They have to share the information. It is also provided under that head that within a certain period of time - there will be a transition period - that sharing of information will have to be done on a secure digital basis. The scope of the Bill with regard to information applies across the spectrum of the health service, irrespective of where the patient is receiving his or her care and whether at one stage in their journey through the health system they receive it on the private side and then go to the public side and back to the private side. What we are looking at in the Bill is a national health information system that recognises no barriers between the various parts of the health system in terms of the movement of information.