Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am not blaming the messenger, but a week or two ago the papers reported that almost 2,500 women were on a waiting list to be tested. Between the crisis first bursting on the scene and this week, how many of the women have been tested? I worry that we go from week to week where there is another announcement that something else has arisen or there is a pending problem and that erodes public confidence in the system. We need to get to the bottom of it. To what extent is capacity a problem? Would the State be better off investing in national capacity rather than subcontracting? Were the Government to invest in national capacity, that would represent a once-off capital expenditure where the other is repeated every day with each person who is tested. Has there been any cost-benefit analysis of that?