Does the Tánaiste think it is now time to pass legislation banning outsourcing in healthcare, given what we can read in today's Irish Independent? There is a backlog of 80,000 tests from women who underwent cervical screening in recent months. CervicalCheck has issued a warning on its website about a wait of more than five months in a small number of cases. This follows revelations that an additional laboratory in the UK, which is run by MedLab Pathology and which screens tests in Dublin, is being asked to reduce some of the backlog. During this entire scandal, tests are being sent to private companies abroad who then outsource the tests. As was discovered recently, in many cases CervicalCheck did not even know where the tests were going. It is clear that lives are being put at risk for profit and for cost. Is it now the time to re-nationalise the screening of all of these important diagnostic tests and bring them back into the public health system?

The straight answer to the Deputy's question is "No". We should not ban the outsourcing of healthcare. I do not believe that the system could manage that in the short term.

What of the long term?

If arguments are made to conduct testing here, and if those recommendations stand up to scrutiny, then of course the Government will consider that. Dr. Scally has examined many of these issues. The laboratories that are being used outside Ireland have been shown to be as accurate as laboratories in Ireland.

That is not true.

We need to keep these issues under review so that we provide quality and reliable screening and test results. I do not believe the answer here is to simply ban all outsourcing. That would cause a lot more problems than it would solve.