Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Have the people who are leading that change in that unit of 700 people ever contemplated visiting places such as Denmark - maybe they already have - which is not dissimilar to us in terms of its demographics and population? Estonia is a very small, agile country that has been doing extraordinary things in the use of technology for how a citizen interacts with the state. Have we visited these places? Have we studied how they have done this? It is complex but it is not rocket science. Countries such as Spain, particularly in some regional areas, are leading the way in how a patient can carry a card that literally moves with them throughout the whole system. All the records move with the patient throughout the system.

When I was a junior Minister in the Department of Education a very long time ago, I was asked to go to an ehealth conference in Boston. Two people from the Spanish health system were there, and this was in 2012, describing how they were going to completely transform their health system, and they are doing it. Is it the case right now that the HSE does not have the resources and expertise? Is it the case, as we are led to believe by people who have immersed themselves and then withdrawn very quickly, including Martin Curley and others, that there is massive opposition to the kind of cultural change required to adopt a system like this?