Mr. Damien McCallion:

The strategy is up to 2030. Realistically, the procurement process takes approximately 15 months and then we aim to have a period of about two years to get the first region live. We have already identified the first region, which is Dublin north east, simply because of the age of some of the systems. The systems in the Mater and Beaumont hospitals are 30-plus years old and have to run what they do today, which is not even the full electronic health record. That will be the first region. From there, it will be contingent on the tenders as to how quickly or otherwise we can go. We have come up with a strategy for implementation, that is, when we do one region, we will do one more and then we will do the other two together.

Northern Ireland has just implemented this system and we are in close co-operation with it in this regard. While there was a break during Covid-19, it completed implementation in a ten-year period, approximately, from the business case to full implementation. Its last trust went live a couple of months ago. I visited several times with the people up there. They have done a super job and it is giving them a full health record.

While we have this system in maternity services, it is isolated to the six maternity hospitals. We need to get something that is system wide. That is our aim.