Dr. Tony Holohan:

I am entirely in agreement that there have been a range of improvements at a population level since the programme was commenced, not just in relation to mortality. A total of 50,000 high grade lesions have been picked up and so on over the period, and the incidence impact that we have heard about, just under 7% in the years from 2010 to 2015, is now beginning to feed into mortality. I want to take the opportunity to pick up on the point that Senator Burke was making. I refer to the importance of us being able to get into a situation where we can on a positive and a proactive basis communicate the full range of information. That has been a challenging space for the HSE, and for the Department, and for the professional colleges who would normally be in that space over the course of the past 12 to 18 months. It is something that proactively we need to get back into in the coming year, and that is something that we will be doing for sure.