Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

That arises from the fatal decision in 2008 to outsource to Quest and the other companies and to go forward with outsourcing to America, to a company based in Australia, and all the laboratories from Honolulu to Texas. The Minister might elaborate on how quality assurance can be carried out across laboratories with five hours' time difference and 4,000 miles between them. Do teams of Irish experts go out and examine each laboratory, the ones they know about? Can the Minister imagine that for a system? The Minister gave a four-page speech here with no reference to any of those issues or how we might learn from this. How are we going to stop the outsourcing? Ironically, one of the companies has come back to the idea that it should be located in Ireland and should have never moved from here in the first place. The Minister would agree with that. It has gone right back to Dublin because it was much more efficient and effective to do so. I appeal to the Minister to tell us what plan the Government has to stop the outsourcing. What capacity have we now and when will we have the capacity to provide a proper screening service to the women of Ireland, who deserve it?

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