Mr. Barry Lowry:

Unfortunately, on the health side, Ireland and the way its health system was set up was always going to be a handicap to making the scale of progress that the likes of Denmark and Sweden have done. The legislation is obviously in place to fix that. The legislation will put people in control of their health data rather than hospitals, which previously believed it was their data. That is very positive and it will create the basis. Actually there are three-related initiatives in this regard. First, there is the HSE app, which is already live and very popular. The second initiative, for which the contract has just been awarded, is the shared care record. It allows for people to carry basic health information on their phones, which means that if they were to become ill in France, for example, this information would be portable because they are carrying it themselves.

That will be introduced in the coming two to three years. The third, which I suppose is the jewel in the crown, is the electronic health record. That business case is currently going through the approval process. That will hopefully finish by the end of the year, and we will be into the start of the project. That will be a long project but it is worth doing well because it is so important that it works well and effectively.