Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Independent)
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654. To ask the Minister for Health the amount the establishment of the new patient identity numbers system within the Health Service Executive will cost; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21340/15]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The Health Identifiers Act 2014 provides for the establishment of systems of identifiers for client and healthcare providers, both professionals and organisations. My Department is completing the legal work to allow for the Act to be formally commenced. The Act provides that operational responsibility for the identifiers may be assigned to the HSE. It is intended that the register of Individual Health Identifiers will be implemented first. Preparations for the implementation of the Individual Health Identifier are at an advanced stage by the HSE. The necessary management and organisational structure to enable the establishment of the register are being put in place, a development plan is currently being drafted which will give indicative costs for the lifetime of the project, some technical implementation work has begun and a Privacy Impact Assessment has been commissioned and is nearing completion. When the establishment of the Individual Health Identifier register is complete the next phase will be to allow for other health ICT systems in both primary and acute care to access the register and make it available as the Act allows. This work will take time to complete and I must emphasise that this is primarily a patient safety initiative. The work will be done on a phased basis over a number of years.

All ICT elements of the project are subject to project approval by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. HSE has estimated the ICT related costs for the initial phases of the project to set up the register for completion in 2015 will cost €1.3 million approximately. Further work on estimating ICT related costs for the roll out the system of identifiers to other areas such as acute hospitals, mental health, etc have yet to be completed.

HIQA are currently engaged in a public consultation exercise on "Draft Governance and Management Standards for Health Identifiers Operator in Ireland" which will assist in underpinning a governance framework for the operation of the system of identifiers to ensure trust and confidence of the health identifiers system in the country. It is important to point out that the roll out of a system of health identifiers for patients, professionals and organisations has no linkage with any eligibility for any type of health service or benefit. It is primarily a patient safety initiative and a fundamental building block for eHealth and ICT developments into the future.