Yesterday, with other Deputies, I attended the launch of the "Final Report – Scoping Inquiry into the CervicalCheck Screening Programme" by Dr. Gabriel Scally. It was an uplifting briefing but it was also sombre. One could not help thinking of all the women who should have been here today had it not been for the systemic failures in the cervical cancer screening programme.

A number of issues arose on the recommendations, namely, capacity and there being none and the Coombe hospital is trying to fill that gap; outsourcing, most of which is going to the United States; and also language which is very important with the question of "should" or "must" in relation to disclosure. Is the Government committed to all the women who should have been here who are not because of this awful part of our history?

I join with the Deputy in thanking Dr. Scally and his team for the work they have done in the past couple of years. We were very lucky as a country that we found him. He has done some really good work to help us improve the CervicalCheck programme. I am very grateful to him and his team for that.

The Coombe lab is being developed at the moment. We are keen to have it up and running and commissioned as soon as possible so that we can have many more, if not the vast majority of smear tests examined in Ireland rather than abroad. As Dr. Scally pointed out, it is a good idea to have more than one lab for many obvious reasons, both in terms of redundancy and also comparing results from different labs. He did point out that the labs currently being used, such as Quest, are very high quality. His previous report pointed out that the labs used abroad were very much up to international standard.