Mr. Damien McCallion:

In the public system, the Coombe accounts for about 9%. We have two providers that provide roughly the balance equally between them. In terms of moving forward with the new tender for HPV testing, we have made a commitment that we are going to invest in the Coombe to build up public capacity but we know that will take time on the construction side and probably, more importantly, in terms of the skills and all of the things alluded to by the Deputy earlier. We are committed to doing that and building it up over time and the Coombe is committed to working with us on that. That is coming from the most senior levels within the Coombe so that will help.

In the meantime, we must run a tender to find a partner that will work with us as we develop the Coombe over a number of years to help us provide the new test and screening service. Under that tender, we will offer a tender out through the market. We are using a process that will allow us to have a dialogue because there was a real risk that we would go to the market and nobody would respond in light of our difficulties in Ireland. We had a serious concern about that. Through the approach we have taken, we are more confident that we will secure people who are interested in working with us. In that respect, we ran what is called a pre-tender market engagement before Christmas where we sought the views of the market and were able to build that into the tender process. Our advertisement for that will be placed in the next number of weeks. We are hopeful that we will see people respond to that, which will allow us to move forward in terms of HPV primary screening. To be clear, at the moment, we are dependent on finding a partner to work with us from wherever. The process will look at who is the most suitable regarding the service, the quality and so on around that over the next number of years while we build up public provision to try to balance that so that we are not as dependent on the private sector as we move forward.