Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I will put my other questions then. Why has Ireland never reached the 1.8% average high-grade detection rate that other countries reached, particularly as this incidence of cancer here is higher than anywhere else in Europe? Will the witnesses explain the other screening programmes? MedLab Pathology claims, in its own propaganda and publicity material, that it has the contract for the bowel screening programme. Will Mr. O'Brien or anyone else from the HSE clarify if this is the case? Will the witnesses also clarify how outsourcing to a foreign company could be considered best practice when it is not then possible to have multidisciplinary team meetings?

Finally, regarding the calls to the helpline, it was stated that 4,876 women are awaiting callbacks. Obviously, this could take a huge amount of time because they will require significant conversations. Is Mr. O'Brien saying that these women could also have had inaccurate results and that if they require callbacks, the scale of this could be much higher? Given what we have learned, will the HSE give a commitment not to outsource this testing ever again and to bring it back under public, nationalised control here in Ireland? In other words, to be carried out close by to the hospital where a woman would be receiving treatment?