Mr. Damien McCallion:

Yes, that is correct. Quest Diagnostics fulfilled its aim of returning 800 results. The target is to complete the balance within two weeks from next week. Regarding the point made by the Chairman earlier, we have examined that possibility and kept all options on the table. At the moment, however, we believe we have capacity identified and a plan we can secure. We will try to nail that down over the coming week or two, including quality assurance visits. The reason we cannot be as specific as we would like to be is because we need to schedule those quality assurance visits and then tie down some of the contractual details.

Once that is in place, as I stated earlier, we will write to those people in the backlog to give them the timeframe. That is the priority now. We have on several occasions examined how we could logistically manage moving people on normal three and five-year recall periods out. That, however, also creates a problem straightaway in 2020. We would be just shuffling everything and not changing anything. Dr. Doherty earlier gave an example from the Netherlands where the programme was paused. They had the advantage of being able to oversee a larger number of people. Instead of missing people, the final six months of people who were due to be tested before the suspension were seen during the previous the six months. There was then a pause to let HPV come in. It was a slightly different model than the scenario we face.