Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

It is not satisfactory that two of the centres in Tipperary are outside of the service level agreement. To clarify, in both Thurles and Tipperary town, we are within that SLA target, which is ten weeks in the case of Thurles and seven weeks in the case of Tipperary town.

Obviously, if there is a long period where a service provider is not able to meet the standards, my Department, and it is primarily the RSA which has responsibility for this, will take action to ensure that we get within our limits.

The backlog, which is the real challenge and difficulty here, was caused like many things in our society by the disruption brought by Covid-19. We saw the wait time go up to approximately 30 weeks by the middle of last year as a consequence of not having sufficient testers and having a significant backlog. We are addressing it and bringing that right down. My understanding from the RSA is that by the middle of this year, we will have the national average down to ten weeks. If any particular centres are outside that, the RSA are directed and have the powers to act to bring it back into line.

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