Mr. Brendan Walsh:

Starting with Donegal, the waiting time there is now 15 weeks. This is a significant development. As I referred to a moment ago, the location we have on a piece of paper is where a tester's base is, but we move those testers around the country. If we take Clifden in County Galway as an example, we do not have a tester headquarters there because we do not need a tester there all the time. We move them out from Galway city as and when required. The number of tests an individual tester does in a normal given day is seven or eight. With the advent of overtime, as I stated earlier, we are doing tests from 7.25 a.m. right up to 7 p.m., where possible, and testers are working Saturdays and bank holidays. Testing on a Sunday does not actually give us a net gain because people still have to have a day off in the week. Our testers are working a lot of long hours now and we must be cognisant of this fact. The testers are putting their shoulders to the wheel at the time when we need them to do so.

As we are working through this plan we will be moving testers around the country to ensure we get all the test centre waiting times down to the level of the SLA. For example, if I take Charlestown in Finglas, the waiting time there now is around 12 weeks. We have a new group of testers there. The waiting time there previously was 36 weeks, so a huge amount of work has gone in there. Once we get that waiting time down to ten weeks, we will give the opportunity to support people going to different test centres to work in them for a while. We move people to where the need is and that is the big part of this plan. Our teams are working with us and are going to where they are needed. We look at the plan and see the number of tests required to get the waiting times in a particular area down to the SLA level or to improve it. We then send people there for a couple of weeks. This is how we are doing it.