Mr. Damien McCallion:

I will try to reassure the Deputy. A workforce plan has been developed which looks at all aspects. Critical within the laboratory is the logistics and the operation is where much of the heavy numbers are in staffing. Equally, there are medical scientists and consultants. If one does not have medical consultants, one cannot provide the service or one is constrained in the volume and scale that can be provided.

The workforce plan has been agreed, the Coombe has ten posts, which it is now advertising and recruiting. On the medical side, we have identified additional posts. They are in the middle of trying to look for those posts. Some are going through the recruitment process but it will be very challenging to recruit people. We have tried to broaden out the nature of the role to make it more attractive to consultants. On the medical scientist side, the Coombe has a programme running with the institutes in Dublin. It is also recruiting and ran a campaign in recent months to recruit people. We are actively trying to increase capacity within the Coombe. There is also a sensible growth volume. Moving from 10% to a larger amount requires that it be done in a very safe, sustained way to ensure that one does not create difficulties for the existing laboratory. Finally, the new facility will go to planning this week. The money is in the capital plan. It will be completed, if on target, by the end of 2021. Very significant steps are being taken. I take the point that we need to try to accelerate the process but we are trying to push it across each of the three staff categories of medical, medical scientist and the logistics and operation piece.