Mr. Tony O'Brien:

Certainly, Deputy. In referring to international standards, I was referring to international quality standards, of course. I will come back to the bigger question. The only reason there was a reference to a ten-day turnaround, and why that was important, was because prior to that it had not been possible to indicate to women who availed of the pilot programme in the mid-west when, against a very long timeframe, they might expect to get their results. A big priority, in order to encourage uptake of a screening programme, is that at the point that a smear test is taken there is some certainty about when the result will be provided. That was the rationale behind that issue.

Before the tendering process took place, guidelines for quality assurance on cervical screening with reference to the EU guidelines were developed in 2007 to 2008, and they were part and parcel of tendering process. There was also an external international peer review of those guidelines, which was referenced earlier. Quality metrics were in place, and still are in place, for any laboratory under the contract, which relate to pathologist workload and reporting profiles, screeners' workload, primary screening sensitivity, the reporting protocol-----