Mr. Damien McCallion:

I will make two points in response. One relates to the timing and whether it is one year, two years or three years. That would have been looked at initially by a clinical expert group to determine what is the appropriate timing in terms of interval between screening and there are balances, as has been described by colleagues, in relation to false negatives and false positives, in other words, over screening versus getting that balance right. There would have been recommendations around that. Going forward, with the advent of the new national screening committee, that will also help in terms of looking at that for future testing or major changes to existing programmes. The timing would have been evidence-based in terms of whether one does three years and then how one deals with individual cases. Some people may require a more frequent smear and others can move to a longer smear cycle. That is all determined by experts in terms of the timing.

As Dr. Holohan said, the laboratories provide a service simply around cytology and HPV. That is quality assured and examined through a whole series of measures. My colleague, Dr. Doherty, can speak to that if need be. That is purely the laboratory element of it, but in terms of the timing on whether it is one year, two years or three years, that is determined by a group of medical experts that would have determined that three years was appropriate for most people. Some people will have more frequent recalls where that is determined by their own clinical status.