Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

I could not interfere when the preferred bidder won the contract on the basis of quality and turnaround time.

As regards turnaround times, the laboratory must turnaround a result within ten days of receipt of a smear. This is necessary to facilitate the woman receiving a result within four weeks. This is as recommended in the standards and is not inconsistent with Dr. McGoogan's report which referred to the necessity for women to receive a result within four weeks. The smear must be taken, forwarded to the laboratory and returned by it before the woman can be contacted in regard to the result and any necessary follow-up treatment such as colposcopy and so on can be arranged. For a woman to obtain a result within four weeks a laboratory must turnaround a test within ten days.

I should point out that the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland has stated: "In line with our mission to promote the health of the nation the College supports [this was issued last night] the implementation of the national cervical screening programme and the goal of reducing waiting times for smear test results....". The national screening service has met with and agreed to work with the college in this regard. There has never been forced redundancy in the public sector. I do not know why people are suggesting 70 or 100 people will lose their jobs.

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