Mr. John Connaghan:

I will ask Ms Anne O'Connor to talk about winter planning and Mr. Damien McCallion to talk about CervicalCheck.

May I say a word or two about Christmas leave and staff rostering? I cast my mind back over the course of the past year and I think we owe a debt of gratitude to staff. Let us think of what happened over the course of the last winter, in terms of snow and storms. Many staff slept overnight and did not go home, they stayed to fill the next shift. I think we owe all the staff in the Irish health service a debt of gratitude for all that service. Staff go beyond what is in their normal day to day job description when it is needed.

I am not sure where the Taoiseach got the impression he did; one of the things we do - and perhaps it is a matter that we need to explain better - during the course of the last part of December and the early part of January, is suppress electives. That is sensible because operations rescheduled into the back end of January or into February allow for some extra capacity. Rostering in that sense takes place and that is where we need to explain things a little bit better. We also need to consider that many of the Departments we have are singlehanded, particularly in rural locations and we also need to think about how we actually roster around those staff.