Mr. Damien McCallion:

We have evaluated that option as part of the option appraisal process on an ongoing basis. We have secured two laboratories which are providing results much more quickly, within three weeks in one instance and seven to eight weeks in the other. We are working with another laboratory in order to reduce its times. It has identified capacity, and we are scheduled to visit it soon, and are hopeful that it will help to address the problem. If we try to change the cycle from three or five years and moving people out it would involve more than a number of months. We would have to move the screening services out for a significant period in order to address the backlog and the throughput, as well as addressing new participants in the programme, who have never been screened before and so are considered high-risk. Some participants would move into the HPV project, because women would then have to be called earlier during the following year, on top of those who would be scheduled for a smear anyway in 2020. I am not dismissing that as an option, but when we evaluated the options our preference was to try to secure capacity. We now have capacity on the table, and our focus now is to see whether we can get it into the system. If we can do that it will help to alleviate the waiting times reasonably quickly. I will not get into the possible timeframes involved today because we are in the middle of negotiations with a number of the providers around this. It is an option we are considering, and we have set it out and mapped it out in detail, as we have done with all of the other options. As Dr. Doherty said earlier, some programmes did that as a sensible entry into HPV screening in order to give the programme a bit of space so that we could move in in a structured way. Perhaps she could add to that.