Kate O'Connell (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I had a look on its site. I printed this off before the summer, for our last meeting. In May 2010 MedLab Pathology was given the contract to the be sole provider of the national colon cancer programme. It opened the laboratory in August 2010. It received ISO 15189 accreditation in December 2011. Perhaps I am reading it all wrong, but it seems that we have another example of a laboratory that was open and received a contract to carry out the national bowel screening programme. At the point it was awarding the contract it did not have ISO accreditation, which is fine because it may have been conducting other tests.

Was the company providing services relating to colon cancer testing on behalf of the State before the point at December 2011 when it received its ISO accreditation from INAB? Are companies allowed to do testing before they are accredited?