Dr. Ciara Martin:

Newborn screening is with a dried blood spot - the heel prick. We look at all babies who are born within Ireland when they are aged three to five days and we take a heel prick from them. We look for nine conditions. We acknowledge that puts us somewhere in the middle Europe-wide of what is looked at and we would like to expand that. The national screening advisory board is considering that. We acknowledged earlier that we need agility to improve our time from acknowledging conditions should be on that dried blood spot screening to actually getting conditions in place on it, mindful that everything we screen for needs a good pathway, to have evidence behind it and to have treatment for it. I would confident we have the right people on the advisory side who can advocate for children and all the groups that are there. I hope we continue to improve as we go by working with the advisory board and the Department.