Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This is a significant and memorable day. This legislation delivers on an important programme for Government promise, namely to establish safe access zones for women and service providers right across the country. Safe access zones will now become a reality in our country. Once this Bill is signed into law by the President, it will protect service users and providers. It will allow women in Ireland to access legal health services without fear of intimidation or harassment. It will ensure that our friends, colleagues and family members are treated with consideration and empathy at a time when they most need our care. It will ensure they are afforded the dignity and privacy they need and deserve to make their own decisions.

It is important to recall that today is the work of many hands. Numerous people contributed to this Bill, and it is not possible to list them all. However, I thank everyone who has been involved. I thank the various cathaoirligh for the way in which they have chaired the debate with fairness and impartiality over recent months. I recognise, as we all do, that there are diverse views in this House on this issue and in bringing forward legislation in a democratic society, it is important that we hear them all. I thank the Members of this House and those of Dáil Éireann for their time for their thought-provoking contributions in scrutinising this legislation. It has certainly been a noteworthy few months in Seanad Éireann.

I take the opportunity to express my appreciation to our colleagues in the HSE, the Office of the Attorney General, the Department of Justice and An Garda Síochána for their considerable input into this process. I wish to place on the record my appreciation for the considerable contributions of the Together for Safety team; the genesis of this legislation lies in its innovative work in this area. Most importantly, I thank our healthcare providers right across this country. I refer to the nurses, midwives, GPs, hospital doctors, health and social care professionals and healthcare assistants all over Ireland who are making sure that women can get access to the best possible legal and safe services.

Today is an important step in terms of women's healthcare. It was one of the promises, as I said, in the programme for Government, but we are going much further in terms of women's healthcare in this country. I had the great privilege last week of launching the second women's health action plan in the Coombe Hospital. We launched our first women's health action plan in 2021, and we set a very ambitious and somewhat audacious goal which was to drive a revolution in women's healthcare. The reality is that our country has a very dark history when it comes to women's healthcare and their reproductive rights. More than that, we had a situation until very recently whereby the most common of healthcare conditions for women not only were not being provided for, in many cases they were not even being recognised nor was the requisite training provided to our healthcare professionals. I refer to women seeking help with endometriosis, women seeking perinatal supports and women with menopause. The idea that not only did we not have specialist services to deal with menopause but that it was taboo to even talk about menopause being a thing was extraordinary.

I applaud the efforts of a great number of people in respect of this legislation. Within in my Department, officials have worked night and day on the women's health agenda. We have had the women's health task force front and centre, which meant that these services were devised by women for women. We engaged in a listening exercise right across the country. I refer to our healthcare providers in both public and private care, the very strong support in the Oireachtas and from civil society, the National Women's Council and more. There have been many ideas tabled in this Chamber. As colleagues may be aware, we had a Private Members' motion recently on scalp cooling for people going through cancer care. It was a Green Party motion that asked for that to be expanded and it is one of the measures we included in our women's health action plan last week.

On nearly all of the measures we set out to launch in 2021, we have met or exceeded them in terms of menopause and endometriosis services, perinatal and mental health, eating disorders, bereavement services and many more. The credit for that goes to our healthcare workers. The impact that these services are having cannot be underestimated. I will give colleagues just one quick example. I recently opened the 16th see-and-treat gynaecology clinic in the country in Sligo. There are five more such clinics to come, which will mean that we will have 21 in total. Up to that point, women referred for an outpatient gynaecology appointment in Sligo waited four years just to see a consultant. They would then referred for diagnostics and back to the consultant for assessment and onwards for procedure. The whole thing took approximately five years. They are now being seen in four weeks, and all of the services, that is, the consultation, the diagnosis, the assessment and any minor procedures are happening on the same morning.

This Bill, which has now passed, is one important step - and it is only one step - in what we are doing, which is making sure that Ireland is one of the most advanced countries anywhere in the world when it comes to modern, progressive, safe and expert women's health services.