Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)

Listening to what the witnesses are saying about sharing data, I would like to hear what the barriers are. Let us take St. James's Hospital and St. Luke's Hospital, which deals with cancer. One part of St. James's Hospital does not talk to another part in that they do not have a seamless connection. If I went for bloods in St. Luke's, my urologist in St. James's would not be able to get access without going through.

A lot of our hospitals do not talk to each other in the sense of sharing data and so on. We are doing this ambitious thing of trying to get co-operation North and South. From speaking to people in St. James's Hospital about co-operation, particularly around cancer care, they were saying there would be different barriers such as GDPR and sharing information about some of the cancers that are there and looking at that. At one level we are very much starting from scratch on this. The ambition should be that we bring this about. Will Dr. Kavanagh concentrate this evening on what the physical, legal and other barriers are? If he does not have time to go into it, that is grand. He can write to the committee on this. The committee realises there are huge barriers there. If we cannot get it done at micro level in hospitals, what will it be like at macro level?