Professor Fidelma Flanagan:

Absolutely. That is what makes our screening programme so unique among international programmes. We not only detect early breast cancers but are responsible for ensuring there is surgery and proper treatment at the end of it. That is unique to this country compared with other countries. We cannot invite healthy women for screening unless we can guarantee surgery and treatment at the far end.

When we started our host hospitals were on the front line in dealing with the major disruptions of Covid-19, so we could not guarantee surgery. We must keep a watchful eye that if we bring in a healthy population and detect breast cancer, we must have the facilities in which to operate. We must keep watching to see if that changes.

At the beginning of the pandemic there were many women in our system we needed to diagnose. Some of those were outsourced to the private system for surgery. We systematically worked through the women already in our system effectively. It is a primary concern that we cannot screen if we cannot provide the diagnostics and therapeutics at the other end. That is when we must watch our host hospitals and ensure facilities and capacity are there to deal with screening-detected cancer. At the same time we must be able to strengthen our symptomatic service and encourage women who have symptoms or feel a lump to go to that symptomatic service. Our most important achievement is providing access all through the pandemic for women who had a symptom.

Our number one goal is to continue to provide access to women who have symptoms going forward.