Mr. Damien McCallion:

I will take one or two points and might ask my colleague Ms Fitzgerald to talk about the tracking system. Dr. Henry may speak to the wider questions of the audit and timing and about the retrospective element. Dr. Doherty might speak about HPV screening.

On the question on the balance between Quest Diagnostics and the Coombe, in the first quarter of this year we faced not having a cervical screening programme. We had done a global trawl for capacity for the laboratories. That was limited as people moved to HPV and there was little to no appetite for companies to come into this country to provide a service. It was clear, as we have discussed earlier, that it would take a significant time, notwithstanding the effort and investment that has gone into the Coombe to build that up. Following three months of long and protracted negotiations with the two existing providers, we managed to get an agreement. That is the context for where we are and in terms of understanding that, it is important to note that while the Coombe did not grow, it took on much more complex work with the colposcopy smears. Both the Coombe and Quest Diagnostics have stepped up in that regard. Our strategies were clear, namely to build up the capacity of the Coombe, and to rebalance between public and private testing. As I said earlier, we believe we can make some progress on that over the next number of years. On where we can ultimately get to, we have challenges in defining a point that the Coombe can grow to but we are putting everything behind that to try to strengthen it. On the risk with that, it is the same whether it is 90% or 10%. The Coombe will be subject to the same quality assurance that Dr. Doherty has talked about, as will Quest Diagnostics. As members can see, there has been one QA visit already. An additional QA visit is planned and those are increasing in frequency from the three to five year reviews that would have been undertaken heretofore to partially restore public confidence for people and alongside the other steps that are in place within the programme.

I will ask Ms Fitzgerald to talk to the tracking system and the efforts to improve how information is put together.