Mr. Barry Lowry:

The plan that I talked about previously is a plan that moves towards 2030. The idea is not that we must wait until 2030 for all these things to appear. Rather, it is staggered with different services of those 193 coming live earlier. Of course, the other thing we have to factor in is that people prefer to consume all their services by phone rather than by desktop PC. Providing some of those services in the form of an application is just as important as simply doing it through the normal computer service. I am hopeful that we will be constantly making announcements about new changes to services and so on. We all look on with envy at the Scandinavian countries because Denmark, Estonia, Sweden and Finland are absolutely superb.

I attend EU chief information officers, CIO, meetings. Ireland is in the position where we are hoping to beta launch our digital Government wallet this year. We are further ahead than any of those countries in that particular space. That is because we have taken the work forward with us, a combination of life events, which is very much based on the OECD principles about fairness, equality and meeting the needs of the human. It is human driven, as it would call it, while also trying to take the best from technology.

On the technology side, we are working with Irish companies that have been successful worldwide on the back of what they have done with us in government, which is very much based on the principles of govtech. I am very optimistic that when we speak to the committee again, we will be on a path where real progress in this area will be seen.