Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)

I thank Senator Fitzgerald for raising this important issue. I will reply on behalf of the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney, who is unavoidably absent.

To address unacceptable delays in processing smear tests, from January this year, the Health Service Executive outsourced the processing of more than 35,000 smear tests to a fully accredited United States laboratory. Quest Diagnostics Corporation in the US is College of Pathologists and clinical laboratory improvement amendment approved. This means that its laboratory facilities are inspected and accredited by the College of Pathologists which is a deeming authority recognised by the federal authorities to visit and inspect every two years. It has stringent and detailed quality monitoring processes and is internationally recognised.

The HSE has informed the Department of Health and Children that these tests were all processed and reported on by the end of June. The HSE has confirmed that all laboratories are achieving a turnaround time of four to five weeks in the reporting of smear tests. In all laboratories, before a result is issued, a rapid 60 second review of every negative and unsatisfactory smear is done as part of normal quality assurance procedures.

It is important to note that a smear test is not a diagnostic test. The limitations of cervical screening are such that there may be false negative and false positive results. It should also be noted that more than 80% of smears taken are reported negative or no abnormality detected, requiring no follow up for the client. Since the introduction of liquid-based cytology, the rate of unsatisfactory reports has dropped on average from 10% to below 3%. All Irish public laboratories have converted to liquid-based cytology with the exception of Cork University Hospital where this process is under way. Medial laboratory scientists sign out negative smears and pathologists sign out all the abnormal cases.

The roll-out of a national cervical screening programme is the most efficient population approach to preventing and controlling cervical cancer. The Minister allocated additional revenue funding of €5 million to the national cancer screening service this year for the roll-out of the Irish cervical screening programme, and an additional 30 posts have been approved. The programme will commence national roll-out in January 2008.

The national cancer screening service plans to have cervical screening managed as a national call-recall programme via effective governance structures that provide overall leadership and direction in terms of quality assurance, accountability and value for money. All elements of the programme — call-recall, smear taking, laboratories, colposcopy and treatment services — will be quality assured, organised and managed to deliver a single integrated national service.

Roll-out of the programme will be based on a turnaround time of four weeks for programme smears. The service is developing new contractual arrangements for tests in 2008 which will include service level agreements to achieve this objective. It has the Minister's support in this regard.