Mr. Damien McCallion:

The Coombe has an existing arrangement with one of the Dublin institutes and is utilising it. We are also trying to recruit people with experience from outside. One of the challenges with cytology as a career is that the numbers are dropping significantly because of the new testing model. People are leaving the profession. In the UK, there are huge delays as a result of people leaving prior to moving to new testing models. It has a different form of backlog pressure . We are also looking at where we can broaden the range of specialties people might have so they are not just dedicated to a single specialty that might, perhaps, present problems for them from a career perspective. On the medical science side, the Coombe has an arrangement that it is looking to extend. It is also trying to identify people coming out of medical science training programmes and generic programmes who might be interested in working in the field and offering them broader opportunities.