Mr. Damien McCallion:

There are a couple of points to make. Certainly we are trying to get some updates out. We have tried to get some speakers that can perhaps give reassurance from a clinical perspective. I think it would be fair to say that this has been difficult in the past seven or eight days, because there is so much going on around this that information simply does not get through.

We have tried to look at communication from two perspectives. One is the communication with women themselves through the programme, the direct communication. The other perspective concerns getting greater reassurance into the system. We all talk to people who have different views - friends, relatives etc. - and as the Senator says, there is misinformation out there. Hopefully over the coming weeks we will put a plan in place to try to create some reassurance. That has been difficult, to be frank. Although the issue has attracted huge attention, as in the situation the Senator describes, it is difficult to get simple messages across to people who are clearly and understandably very anxious, concerned and unsure of exactly what all this means for them. We are seeing that in our hospitals. Apart from the phone line that I mentioned earlier, they are getting a huge number of calls straight to their colposcopy units. These are placing huge strains on the service. It is our intention to bring together a small group of patients, general practitioners and key people to look at how we can navigate through this, and hopefully provide some reassurance and greater clarity for women.

To be blunt, the difficulty in the last six or seven days has been that with so much happening it is very difficult to translate that through. We are putting messages out but I have to say that we probably need to step back and look at how we might land that much more powerfully in the coming weeks.