Mr. Damien McCallion:

That is the RCOG's estimate. It is not for me to say. I am just giving an indication here. The Deputy will appreciate that it is a matter for the college itself but it has given an indication that the period involved is of that order.

The Deputy also asked about the HPV project and the points he made earlier are relevant in terms of prioritisation and resources. The critical issue with regard to the HPV project is that in order to run it or to implement the switch over from the current model to the new model - remembering that we use HPV screening now for women who have a low-grade test from cytology to give greater assurance - we must flip the process, for want of a better term, so that 100% are on HPV. The critical part in that will be the laboratories. Put simply, we need laboratories to provide a service and the current negotiations that we are concluding, in terms of contracts and so on, will determine the start date. We cannot provide a start date until those negotiations conclude. A critical step must be taken between now and Christmas, which has two parts. As we conclude the contracts, we will be clear on the private laboratories that have the capacity to work with us going forward and on what we can do within the public system. One of our objectives is to balance the public and private system pieces. We also intend to run a pre-market process rather than proceeding with a standard procurement. Given everything that is happening, there is a serious risk in terms of service providers so we intend to do an open, pre-tender market engagement some time towards the end of November or in early December. That will give us an assessment of what is available to us. In parallel, we are working with our own public system to see if we can grow that to improve the balance.