Ms Deirdre Seery:

The HSE does a different kind of work. The work it does in not uniform throughout the country.

The crisis pregnancy programme has done amazing work on highlighting the issue of pregnancy and will be taking the lead role in the sexual health strategy. I hope that some of the expertise it has developed can target the general population, which in turn will support us in our work of targeting the particular populations. One has to be on the ground to know the nuances. One does not get it if one is working in an office in the HSE. That is not to be critical of the HSE but to recommend a partnership approach.

I do not know all the places that men have sex with men in Cork, because I am also in an office, but I know people who do. That is the key.

The Sexual Health Centre was the first organisation in the country to become a sexual health centre as opposed to a HIV service. Sex and health were not words that were normally at the same time. Now it is normalised. Senator Crown talked about writing the story. I love that idea. That is my retirement plan. I have been involved in this field for 24 years. It has been fascinating to see how it evolved. We are involved in outreach work with disadvantaged communities in Cork but we also are involved in schools. The implementation of the SPHE programme in schools is patchy but I think there is a real role for organisations like ourselves to work in schools. We would work in partnership with teachers. Teachers are not necessarily the most appropriate people to talk to children about the risks associated with oral sex and how to have an orgasm. These are the type of questions that people ask us. That is what people want to know. They need to know the biological facts but they have other questions. The major concept that we need to promote is that it is quite easy to talk about sex. If one cannot talk about sex, one cannot talk about risk, sexual pleasure and how to have healthy sexual relationships. Our schools programmes focuses on these issues. BeLonGTo has school's programmes which focus on sexual orientation and we, together with GOSH in Limerick, work on that as well.

The HSE trains the professionals who are working in these organisation. We all have different roles.