Professor Risteárd Ó Laoide:

The issues that arise are diagnostics, and one of these in particular is CT scanning. There has been an alteration in the pathway in some centres for lung cancer whereby they do the CT scan before they see the patient. The reason for this is to reduce the footfall in the hospitals. We try to liaise with each of the clinics monthly to look at the numbers for all the rapid access clinics and the breast clinics to see what specific problems they have. Some of this may be around staffing or some may be around diagnostics. We will use up funding we have available to increase the staffing or the diagnostics, whether it is insourcing or outsourcing, as required.