Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

We are very respectful of the personal rights of individuals and how their data is held and managed. There is a need to hold data electronically for the purposes of providing care, but there are certain guardrails put around who may access that data and on what basis. At the next level when we are looking at how we share and consider data on a more collective level, for health research for example, clearly all that is anonymised and is at a completely different level. In the same way everyone benefits from the changes made to organ donation on the basis it might be the Deputy or it might be me but we all benefit collectively, we all benefit from sharing information not just in Ireland but with Europe in a completely anonymised way for health research purposes and for innovation purposes.

From the perspective of hospitals, I am afraid resistance really is not option. Resistance is futile, in the words of the Borg. To be clear, the State pays for hospital care and it does not matter whether it is a HSE hospital or a section 38 one. The State is the entity paying and all of us are the people who are responsible for that. It is like being slow on integrated financial management systems. It is really not acceptable. This is what we are doing. We are providing a legal basis for how that may be done. There should be no ambiguity about this. This is what is happening.