Dr. Catherine Conlon:

The private services are not fully available throughout the country. Where Affidea is available, women will have to leave their GP practice, the referral will be sent to Affidea and they will have to go to the Affidea service. Affidea, as Ms O'Shea said, might have received the referral and when they get there - it could be quite a distance away - they have to go back, or the sonographer might not be willing to scan them, for example. There can be a number of issues. Our characterisation is this model of care has been a patchwork of services layered onto an overstretched health service. It has lots of wrinkles - or moments, as Dr. Duffy said - for time lags.