Dr. Stephanie O'Keeffe:

I think the Deputy asked, if I heard him correctly, whether the information given to women in the leaflets that deals with false negatives and false positives and the fact that the test is not 100% accurate led to a false reassurance and to women being less vigilant. We would have to go back and look at the data but I would be fairly confident that the coverage of the programme has been increasing year on year, which would suggest that that is not the case. The coverage of the programme is increasing year on year. It is now up to 80% and was at 79% a year ago. That means that more of the population is being covered over that period of time, which means more of the population is coming for their results. The target is 80% and we are now at 80%. As Dr. Holohan has said earlier, we would like to see that go even higher but it is a very high participation level-----