Professor Aiden McCormick:

We are currently trying to expand services within the Prison Service. The difficulty in the Prison Service is blood testing. The prison nurses are not trained in phlebotomy and, for the hepatitis C nurses who go into the Prison Service, it can be very difficult to get access to the patients because the place can be in lockdown or there are no prison officers to bring them up. We have a major difficulty in that regard. There is now up to a six-week delay in some prisons to get a blood test for hepatitis C. We are working to overcome that and we will have a meeting about it with the Irish Prison Service in two weeks' time. Fifty patients have been initiated into treatment for hepatitis C within the prisons so far this year.