Mr. Gerard O'Mahony:

We are talking about the positive predictive value, PPV. I am a very simple man so I go back and look at definitions and give simple examples. In this particular case I go to CervicalCheck for the definition which is in most of its annual reports. It says the positive predictive value is reported as the percentage of women referred with high grade cytological abnormality who have a histological diagnosis of CIN2, which is high grade or higher. A simple example of that is taking three labs, X, Y and Z. In lab X, we give them 100 abnormal slides, they pick up 20 and 16 are accepted to be high grade. Lab Y picks up 40 and it is confirmed that 32 of those are of a high grade and lab Z picks up 80 and 64 are confirmed to be of high grade. That would mean that each of those labs working on the same amount of work has a predictive value, PPV, of 80%. It does not pick up false negatives. What it identifies are the individuals working in the lab and the number of positives they picked up which go on to colposcopy or biopsy and the confirmation of that. Each of those labs has picked up a certain pocket of positivity which is confirmed at 80%. That is what the PPV is. That is what it is defined as and it is defined over and over again.

The Deputy asked about ten years ago when the outsourcing started. Gibbons reported at that stage that the norm across Irish laboratories was a percentage of 1.8%. The outsourced work at the time was giving a figure of 1.2%. He claimed a difference of 0.6%. That 0.6% is 0.6 per 100, six per 1,000, 60 per 10,000 and it works on like that. When one goes back and looks at the first figures-----