Mr. Damien McCallion:

The average time is around 25 days, if I recall correctly. I can confirm that formally in writing as I do not want to mislead the committee but it is of that order. What is important is that there was huge variation initially. Some women had to wait an inordinate amount of time. We had to put a whole team together. We never had this process before. All the debate then took place on getting a protocol which would ensure that the slide was protected and imaged appropriately.

There are a number of other requests outside of that that are to do with the pre-cancerous screening programme in some of the hospitals that were running cervical screening prior to that. We are trying to work with the solicitors. There are quite a number of those in two hospitals.

They are a separate cohort we are trying to work through.