Mr. Damien McCallion:

There is a very clear timetable on the construction project. As I said earlier, it is going to planning this week and is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2021. That is the plan in terms of the building aspect of it. A workforce plan has been developed concerning what is needed to operate a national cervical screening laboratory. Approval was given this year for ten posts through the funding that was mentioned earlier by colleagues in the Department and those people, including medical scientists, are being recruited. The Coombe is working with the institutes in Dublin in terms of the training piece for medical scientists but our biggest challenge will probably involve medical consultants - the appropriate consultant cytopathologists. There are significant challenges. We have one permanent person and one locum person in the country. In order to develop a laboratory, we do not just require a building, medical science and logistics. The medical piece that provides the oversight and engages in multidisciplinary meetings with the colposcopy units for patients who are referred to colposcopy is critical. We have sanctioned the posts and the funding so that is not an issue. We are going through the normal consultants approval process. That is one of the areas where we are working with our medical manpower people. There is a national lead for medical workforce planning in the HSE and we are trying to utilise those to look at opportunities for how we could grow that. There is a clear plan regarding how that will work but we also face a challenge that is part of the ongoing work around looking at international evidence where we need a level of resilience alongside that. If everything is in one laboratory and there is a spike and we lose staff, the danger is that we get back into backlogs. Difficulties can arise if there is an issue in a laboratory. We must look at that balance. Most jurisdictions have found some balance between having some options around resilience as well as part of it and that is also being considered. There is a very clear timetable for the building and a workforce plan has been agreed and has started with regard to recruitment. The Coombe, which has kindly agreed to take on this facility within the hospital, is working with the institutes to develop that and I am confident that they will address that part but there are very significant challenges involving the consultant workforce and trying to develop it. We are looking at a range of options around how we can do that. It goes beyond training in the sense that there is a number of people we need in the country. If we have a small number of people and someone leaves or falls ill, we have no resilience in what we are offering so we need a significant number, which is why we have grown the number of consultant posts within the model for the national cervical screening laboratory, but there are challenges there.