Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I take Deputy Brassil's point on the last issue. As I tried to outline to the Dáil last night work has begun, through the Public Appointments Service, in identifying an executive search. My Department is in contact with the Public Appointments Service and I expect the advertisement to be placed very shortly. It will become apparent in due course that there has been a body of work to try to align this post with the Sláintecare reforms. I heard a Deputy suggest last night that we should leave the post vacant until all the Sláintecare legislation is in place. I do not believe we can do this but we are moving from a role of director general into a CEO role. I take the point and the advertisement will be placed very shortly.

Reference was made to retests and targeting that group of women. I will refer this directly to CervicalCheck and to Damien McCallion. I will ask him to come back to the committee directly on that. The Deputy has made an important point but I would rather the committee received an expert view on it rather than my view. The plan is to move towards HPV testing around October this year. In February this year I approved the introduction of primary HPV screening for cervical smear samples. I did so on the basis of a HIQA health technology assessment, which found that women would benefit by making the screening process more clinically effective and by reducing unnecessary tests for women. This would be a more effective system that would need to test women less often. This will be beneficial all around. I have asked how quickly can we get there and I have been told that October is as ambitious as we can possibly be. I continue to scrutinise that situation because the quicker we can get there the better. Ireland will be one of the first countries in the world to move to introduce this type of testing. This is some positive to come out of a very bad situation.