Marc MacSharry (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for yet again making himself available to the House. My party will be supporting this legislation and I have only a few brief points.

When it comes to data protection, sometimes I feel that the practical application of the aspirations of the Acts are at times counterproductive to the needs of the individual in terms of the information that is available. So many different aspects of Irish life require the same information that is sought in different ways and lodged and stored in different places, and then we must have this seemingly endless duplication and potential for human error, for instance, where one set of information cannot be got or gets lost because the wrong person had it, etc. My party would fully support the idea of health identifiers and health practitioner identifiers as something that can help bridge the gap in information breakdown, enhance safety in terms of health results but also have all the key information in the right place.

The big question is why we cannot have all of this information accessible to the key arms or Departments of State if and when that is required rather than going off and collecting it again, not only in the health area. In the area of social welfare, I, for one, would be an advocate of a national identification card, including a chip that stores all of this information and incorporating codes so that the appropriate professionals are the only ones with access such as the Department of Social Protection in the case of social welfare and the Department of Health in the case of health of the patient, etc., so as not to encroach too much into the area of data protection. It is a no-brainer and it can help.

The Minister has given a detailed overview of what the legislation proposes, and I appreciate that. Clearly, we will have a look again prior to Committee Stage to see whether there are ways of improving it. The critical question I have is whether the resources will be available to make it work correctly. In terms of IT, the EU average spend on investment in IT in the health sector is 2.5%. In Ireland, it is 0.85%. It is not the percentage in itself; it is how it is applied. There was the disaster some years back with the centralised paying system. We all are concerned about that.

In December, the Minister launched the e-health strategy. eHealth Ireland has its aspirations of what it will do and in early 2014 eHealth Ireland will publish a new IT strategy for the health system.

I presume this will be part of that. What will be contained in this strategy? When will it be published? In what way does this legislation fit into that? What kind of numbers are needed to adequately roll out this measure to ensure we have the successful practical application all of us yearn for and that the Minister envisaged in bringing forward the legislation? The Minister mentioned that the fact that the primary care reimbursement service, PCRS, has already been used is of great benefit in the context of how this measure will be rolled out. Is the PCRS system adequate? Is it capable of doing this particular job? The explanatory memorandum states that the publication of the Bill provided the right opportunity to engage with the market to get accurate cost estimates for developing the most appropriate, cost-effective system. That sounds like a big Bill. Where are we on that? The Minister might expand on that aspect in his closing remarks, because it is a concern.

I am aware that this was a commitment given to the troika; its origins go back to 2009. The troika, and indeed the Health Information Quality Authority, HIQA, raised it as an issue in its April review of the programme and included a specific section to do with this area, but another report in 2012 showed that of those dealing with financial management within the health service, less than 10% have adequate qualifications to do that particular job. Are the IT specialists that are required to adequately bring this process forward in place? How much will they cost? What will be the recruitment process and will it be affected by the embargo? There are many questions to be asked but I do not want to go on unnecessarily. The Minister has given a detailed output. All of us welcome the potential of the Bill, in terms of the introduction of health identifiers, for achieving cost-effective health services and, ultimately, for achieving savings, but it is clear that quite an amount of investment - the Minister said this also - is required. Will it be available? How much will it be? Presumably, we are learning from the Irish Water debacle in that regard.

I will conclude shortly to give other Members an opportunity to speak. I know it is not related to the Bill but, as we say in Ireland, while we have the Minister in the House we would be interested to know his view on the exclusion of a health professional or expert from the expert group, given his concerns expressed in writing to his ministerial colleague about the pylons. While we all welcome the review group-----