Mr. Damien McCallion:

I cannot give the Deputy an exact number. A small number, two to three, are filled. I can confirm the exact numbers. Interviews have been held as recently as yesterday. Small numbers have come through. They are a combination of medical scientist posts. In growing the capacity of the Coombe, bearing in mind that capacity is very small, logistics, IT and so on are very important. It is much more than the building. In this instance, the building is the easier part. We have a joint steering group with the Coombe. There are a number of elements to that. It deals with workforce issues. There is a workforce plan as to what is needed and how to develop in the short and long terms.

With regard to recruiting medical scientists, which is one of the challenges, there has been a global shortage of cytologists. With the move to HPV testing, there are fewer career opportunities and people are less interested in doing it. That is one of the challenges that compounds our environmental factors. With regard to medical consultants, we have one permanent consultant. To grow the service to the extent we hope to, we will need to recruit into it. We have had interviews. We have had some success in attracting candidates to at least the interview stage. We will have to see, as it is with medical consultants, whether we can bring those home with the Coombe. We are more hopeful with regard to support roles such as laboratory aides and administrative staff. We can attract people for these roles but there are big challenges on the medical and medical scientist side. We have really struggled.

Retention of staff is equally important. We have to consider the age profile of the existing staff. It is a small team which works very hard and which has worked very hard over recent years, which have been difficult for the team due to the volume of work and targets to be met. The Coombe has an arrangement with an institute of technology. It provides basic undergraduate training for medical scientists to train them in cytopathology. We have managed to attract two people into the programme for next year. It has been quite difficult. There are attractive opportunities for medical scientists in both private and public environments. The Coombe has done work with the institutes of technology in that regard. We will be starting small. If we can get more people, we will seek to grow but it is quite challenging to attract people from the third level sector into that medical scientist area.

Separately, we are recruiting internationally. We are trying to attract people from the UK as its health service moves from cytology-based screening to HPV-based screening. There may be some people who would be prepared to relocate for various reasons. That is a market at which we are actively looking. My point is that, whether we recruit people or train people, this is going to take time. It will get a little bit easier as we move to the new testing model. There are also discussions with the likes of the National Virus Reference Laboratory with regard to collaboration on this new model. In summary, while the building is progressing to planning and a workforce plan is in place with regard to medical consultants - because we need consultants, of whom there are very few in this country - and medical scientists, we still face challenges. As I have said, the Coombe is working with third level colleges and we are still looking to recruit internationally. Posts have been approved this year through the Department and the service plan and these will roll forward into next year.