Mr. Damien McCallion:

I will clarify that. At that meeting I committed to putting someone in charge of that process and bringing in all necessary resources. A number of critical cases involved people who were terminally ill and we committed to prioritising those cases such that the information would be provided in order that court deadlines could be met. The request for access to records may come directly from women or from their solicitor, which may be by means of a freedom of information, FOI, or data access request. All those requests are currently being met. I am aware of one case in which an extra day will be needed and that was agreed yesterday with the woman concerned. We are currently providing access to records in accordance with the deadline. An issue which initially caused some problems was the volume of legal correspondence received which meant that we could not concentrate on getting the records out but, rather, had to try to deal with that correspondence in terms of acknowledgements and so on. We have now put extra resources in place such that legal letters are acknowledged in a timely manner. With the exception of the case that arose yesterday to which I referred and which was clarified this morning with the lady involved, we are meeting the targets for access to records. For access requests the current target is 30 days, while for legal requests, it is meeting the deadlines for pending court cases.

Several steps are needed to provide the records, including the hospital records regarding the woman's cancer treatment and so on, the screening records and the associated correspondence between the hospital and the screening system. Although some of the records are automated, all of those elements must be gathered. We are currently achieving the deadlines for access requests and we will continue to put in whatever resources we need to achieve that. We have put a full team in place. We have three full-time legal people and an administrative team to which we have appointed a manager.