John Lahart
Question:751. Deputy John Lahart asked the Minister for Health when he will be bringing forward legislation to provide for free contraception as pledged in Budget 2022. [32047/22]
View answerTuesday, 21 June 2022
Questions (751)
Written answers
The Report of the Working Group on Access to Contraception, published in October 2019, identified the barriers that exist to accessing contraception, which include accessibility, information, workforce capacity and, for a significant number of women just above the eligibility threshold for a full GMS (medical) card, cost.
In consideration of the recommendations of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the 8th Amendment to the Constitution (JOC8) and the Working Group’s Report, the Programme for Government, 2020 commits to providing free contraception for women, starting with the 17-25 age cohort.
My Department's Contraception Implementation Group was convened in July, 2021 and has been working with partners, including the HSE, towards ensuring that the scheme will commence in Q3, 2022. Funding of approximately €9m has been allocated for this in Budget 2022.
The scheme will provide for:
- The cost of prescription contraception;
- The cost of necessary consultations with medical professionals to discuss suitable contraception for individual patients and to enable prescription of same;
- The cost of fitting and/or removal of various types of long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs) plus any necessary checks, by medical professionals certified to fit/remove same;
- The cost of training and certifying additional medical professionals to fit and remove LARCs;
- The cost of providing the wide range of contraceptive options currently available to GMS (medical) card holders, which will also be available through this scheme, including contraceptive injections, implants, IUS and IUDs (coils), the contraceptive patch and ring, and various forms of oral contraceptive pill, including emergency contraception.
- The scheme will be open to all 17-25 year-olds ordinarily resident in Ireland.
Formal consultations with medical representative bodies with regard to service provision under the scheme have commenced and are ongoing. Following advice from the Attorney General's office regarding the legal framework for the scheme, consideration is being given to providing this by way of primary legislation.
The design of citizen engagement information and publicity campaigns to support and promote the roll out of the scheme will be finalised in the coming months, to be launched in the month preceding and during the initial phase of scheme roll-out.