Dr. Peter McKenna:

One must start off with the first point, which is that one must get the right people to enter into the service. Traditionally with cervical screening, certainly up until instituting national screening, it was the well informed and well off woman who had availed of the benefits of screening. When one introduces a population-based screening such as this, one eliminates that as much as one can and one includes the entire population. However, it remains a challenge to get everybody in the target population to avail of the service. That is one weakness any screening service will have. The concern will be that the debacle surrounding this, as it was referred to, will make it more difficult to make inroads into the number of women who will not be availing of the service. Getting the right woman to avail of the service is the first step. Ideally, the service should be trying to get to nearly 100% but no service achieves that for a variety of reasons, some of which are very valid.