[updated 14 April 2026]
By Dr Alan Smith, Consultant in Public Health Medicine, National Screening Service
BowelScreen is Ireland's free national bowel screening programme. Bowel screening helps to prevent bowel cancer developing or find it at an early stage, when it can be easier to treat successfully. BowelScreen is for men and women aged 57 to 71 who have no symptoms of bowel cancer.
Extending the age range
We have started to steadily extend the programme to everyone aged 55 to 74, in carefully managed stages. Since October 2023, we’ve made BowelScreen available to 293,000 more people.
- In October 2023, we started inviting everyone aged 59.
- In April 2025, people aged 70 started to get their invitations to take part.
- In October 2025, we started inviting people aged 58.
- From 1 April 2026, we started inviting people aged 57 and 71.
How the programme works
We invite people to take the free BowelScreen home test (FIT kit) every 2 years. Since the programme began in 2012, we have sent over 3 million invitations to eligible people. Every year we invite more than 320,000 people to take part in BowelScreen. As we extend the age range, and as the population grows, this figure will continue to increase.
As we invite more people to take part in BowelScreen, we work with other parts of our health service to make sure we can safely and successfully deliver all the different parts of the screening programme and ultimately continue to provide a high-quality service.
The BowelScreen programme has many different parts including:
- FIT kit and postage
- letter printing and postage
- call centre
- laboratories that test the returned FIT kits
- hospital endoscopy units – where people go for a colonoscopy, if needed
- histopathology laboratories – where any samples from colonoscopy are sent for analysis
- surgery – for those who need surgery for their cancer.
We carefully plan and manage invitations to match our capacity to deliver bowel screening in line with our standards for quality assurance. This is to make sure everyone who needs it has access to onward testing and treatment.
When a person has a positive (not normal) FIT test result, they are offered a colonoscopy. For every 1,000 people who do the BowelScreen test, about 40 will need a colonoscopy. This takes place in one of BowelScreen’s 16 participating hospital endoscopy units.
We are working with the HSE’s endoscopy programme to make sure there is enough capacity to support more people taking part in BowelScreen as we steadily extend the age range.
Future plans for the BowelScreen age range
Changes to population screening programmes in Ireland must first be evaluated by the National Screening Advisory Committee (NSAC). This independent committee makes recommendations to the Department of Health. NSAC issues calls for proposals for new population-based screening programmes or changes to existing screening programmes. Proposals can be viewed on the NSAC website.
- BowelScreen upper age limit: There is no current proposal with NSAC to extend the age range for BowelScreen beyond 74. The upper age limit of 74 is consistent with European Council recommendations published in 2022.
- BowelScreen lower age limit: In April 2026, the Minister for Health approved a recommendation by NSAC to extend the BowelScreen age range to people aged 50 to 54. NSAC made the recommendation following its review of the findings of a Health Technology Assessment report by the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA). The findings in the report are based on an assumed start date of 2031 for expanding the age range to those aged 50 to 54. This is dependent on the current expansion of bowel screening to people aged 55 to 74 being completed by 2030.