Professor Fidelma Flanagan:

We have lost a year and the fact we are back to pre-Covid levels while there are still restrictions suggests we are doing more with what we normally have. The measures we have taken to screen people have had an effect. We must accept that Covid-19 has had a major disruption to screening. We must accept it will take three years to get around this round. It will take years before we recover fully from this. Each time we go around our cohort of women, however, the backlog will be reduced and our absolute priority is to drop it back to the two-year programme. The future is bright and our changes are effective.