Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)

If we go back to the maternity services, on the basis that when a child is born and an electronic record is being kept from the start, the question is about the priority of getting every maternity unit to operate an electronic system. Mr. Tierney referred to a figure of 70%, but it is about moving forward from there. The issue is the timescale we were talking about whereby if we have 70% that are electronic and 30% that are not, this will cause its own problems even if they are transferred.

There is another issue I want to raise. I was speaking to a general doctor recently in one of the largest hospitals in Dublin. He informed me that he spends 50% of his day chasing down X-rays or scans for patients and trying to get them on to their files. It is about getting all those records on to a patient's file once the scan or X-ray has been performed. How far along are we in trying to achieve that goal?