Mr. Tony O'Brien:

Overall, I think we have a health service that performs at a very high level against enormous challenges of demand which have already been well documented in the Government review of capacity and so on. We all know about the difficulty in getting access. Patient experience surveys carried out jointly by ourselves, HIQA and the Department of Health and published by HIQA show the way people feel about the services that they receive from the HSE. The biggest challenge of course is one of access. This situation aside, I believe that we are served very well by highly dedicated, professional and committed health service staff throughout the country. That also goes for the staff of CervicalCheck and the screening programmes, who are as devastated as anybody by the circumstances that have now unfolded.