Ms Fiona Murphy:

No, it is fairly rare for screening to start below the age of 45. There are only one or two countries that start below that but there certainly are some that do so.

There is great interest in the issue. Our challenge at the moment is to make sure enough people come forward from the age range we cover. At this time, the cervical screening programme is fifth and the breast screening programme is sixth in terms of OECD comparisons. The average across the world is that approximately 55% of people come forward for screening. We are up to 70%, which is tremendous. Ireland is very responsive in terms of people coming forward for screening.

However, this means there is a cohort of people who do not present. We know those people tend mostly to be from disadvantaged areas or geographical areas in which it is harder to access screening. A lot of our job is to try to widen our reach by, for example, putting more mobile testing centres in place that can go further around the country and stay for longer. We are looking to make information more accessible by providing it in different languages. We have done a lot of work with intellectual disability groups and Traveller groups. It is about ensuring people who might find it harder to access our services are given the chance to be screened. We do not want to just focus on the people who come for screening. We also want to make sure there is a focus on the people who do not find it easy to access screening.