Kate O'Connell (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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My first question relates to page 3 and the reference to creating an offence in relation to the buying and selling of personal health information by those who obtain it in the course of employment, business or professional capacity.

I will outline my experience of a GMS doctor with a medical card list, even though the list system has been deregulated in recent years. Let us say that a GP has built up a practice over 40 years and then retires. When they sell on their practice my experience is that the price is usually calculated on turnover, how many patients are on the list and what sort of money the practice is taking in, which is only normal. The same also applies to community pharmacies to some extent whereby the turnover is worked out based on how much the business will be sold for. How will that fit with what I just read out? How will we let that sort of thing continue, which is just normal market practice, in light of the statement here? It could be said that one is selling personal data because there are 100 patients who each spend €60 per month. Data are essentially being sold there, so how does the statement sit with existing private businesses within the health service?

The second thing concerns consent and the sharing of information within the health service. Going back to my own experience, a community pharmacy will have patient records but there is absolutely no correlation to the records in a hospital. There are always difficulties in clarifying what happens at the GP practice, hospital, primary care setting or community pharmacy, and how that information is collated. There is a broader issue of consent. If a patient is discharged from hospital on a Saturday night I would have serious concerns about practitioners, be they community pharmacists or GPs, being able to access information on a patient when the patient has not turned up on that practitioner's doorstep. People have sensitivities and may not want to visit such and such a surgery because the receptionist is their next door neighbour. They may not want to visit a particular pharmacy because the girl behind the counter was a student of theirs at school, or for whatever reason.