Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That was not the case the Deputy made but it was a charge the leader of Fianna Fáil made this week.

The Minister was not advised by his officials not to provide free out-of-cycle tests for women on a temporary basis in order to try to provide confidence and reassurance. That is what happened. Undoubtedly, the response to that, as the Deputy has outlined, was significant as people sought reassurance, and that has put more pressure on the system. The HSE and the Department of Health are responding to that by looking for increased lab capacity to be able to deal with that significant increase, which is a combination, by the way, not just of an increase as a result of out-of-cycle free smear tests on the advice of GPs but also an increased uptake of the test generally. Therefore, the system has been put under a lot of extra strain. It is not easy to put expanded or new contracts in place with the labs concerned. What the HSE is now doing is prioritising the stabilising of CervicalCheck to get us back to where we should be, which is between four to six weeks of a wait as opposed to 24 to 26 weeks, which is not acceptable. That needs to be and is the priority now. The way in which we are responding to that is to look for and source increased capacity so we can get these waiting times down.

In the context of the switch to HPV testing, we are committed to this and international best practice would support that decision. Some countries have already moved to HPV testing but Ireland will be one of the first movers. We have committed in this year's budget to facilitating that transition and the preparation and scoping that is necessary to do that efficiently is under way. We also have to factor in the need to prioritise the stabilisation of the existing screening process, which we are doing. I am not in a position to give the Deputy an exact date. Those questions were asked yesterday at the health committee. As soon as we have a date we can commit to, of course, we will inform the House straight away.

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