Mr. Ciarán Breen:

Regarding the cases where women do not voluntarily enter into what we can call the Meenan process, the best we can do, which is what we have been doing all along, is to effectively, where appropriate, broker a settlement with the women. We have been making sure, wherever possible, that between the making of the claim and its resolution, we are using mediation and talking to the laboratory co-defendants. Quite clearly, they have their own mind and their own advisers and different legal issues arise in individual cases. What we will be doing in every case is trying to ensure that even where mediation breaks down - as has happened in some cases for various reasons - that we keep the mediation process as alive as possible. That is a challenge. The challenge is always to ensure that women do not have to go into court and that the process is not adversarial. We are trying to remove as much as the adversarial element as possible. However, being absolutely realistic about this, there is only a certain amount that we can do because the co-defendant laboratories ultimately will be the large-part paying party.