I was hoping the Minister for Health would still be here. In recent times we have been informed that cervical tests were being delayed because of a lack of capacity in the laboratories that test them but over the weekend it was reported that women paying privately receive their results in two to three weeks, which is brilliant for them but not for the 78,000 women who have been waiting up to 28 weeks. They are all being done by the same laboratory, MedLab. I want clarification on what is happening. Why is this happening? How can a private smear test be prioritised over those of the 78,000 women to whom I refer?

This situation has gone beyond serious. The Minister for Health single-handedly caused this backlog and he has failed to get to grips with it. MedLab treats patients and deals with women in rural Ireland, so women in all of the rural constituencies wait much longer than others. The wait to get a smear result has increased from five or six weeks to eight months. Women are being informed that their tests have expired and that they must come back in for further repeat smear tests, having sought repeat tests in the first instance because they were worried. These repeat tests were meant to provide reassurance. What is the Government doing to fix the problem? Where is the extra capacity? Where are the additional resources? When will the backlog be cleared?

The HSE has advised that it has sourced additional capacity - it has been working on doing so for some weeks - in a number of countries and that it is trying to finalise arrangements in order that this capacity can be incorporated into the CervicalCheck programme. This is a capacity issue. We cannot develop increased capacity in Ireland in the short term so we need to source it in other parts of the world. This is what the HSE is endeavouring to do and, for the first time, I have a note which suggests that it has secured capacity and is trying to finalise contractual arrangements in this regard.