Mr. Damien McCallion:

In terms of the scale of the capacity, we need to address the backlog. To put it in context, the private capacity that is there is minuscule in the context of challenges for the public screening programme in this jurisdiction and other jurisdictions. The NHS has a huge backlog, as has been reported widely in recent weeks, due to its own challenges, which are different to the challenges we face. That is not a significant factor in the scale of those challenges, although I am not saying it is not a wider issue. As the Deputy rightly stated, our challenge is to get the capacity in place in order to get the turnaround times back for women. We made some inroads with two of the laboratories where the turnaround times are down to more reasonable levels, and one is back to pre-crisis levels. We are working with MedLab on solutions for that and we have identified capacity with it. Some of that is taking the opportunity whereby, for example, if a site moves with HPV primary screening, that releases cytology capacity and we try to step in quickly to avail of that to ensure we can use it to help us address our backlog and get the programme back on an even keel where the capacity equals the demand.