Mr. Tiernan Brady:

Senator Colm Burke asked about the reduction in the average age of diagnosis. Unfortunately, there is no one simple answer, but there are several trends. There is a lack of knowledge compared to 20 years ago, when there were huge national public awareness campaigns. The words “AIDS” and “HIV” were pretty much unavoidable as they were very much in the public broadcast space or on billboards. That has gone, however. Within the challenge, there is the problem of our success with science. Science has moved HIV from being an incurable condition that will kill somebody acutely to still being an incurable condition but one that is chronic and can be treated. That makes messaging much more complicated because there is not that fear-based message of the 1980s and 1990s, which was so stark and pierced the consciousness so much. Coming back to Deputy Neville’s point, it is a fine line where the stigma kicks in then.

There are other issues which feed into this. There is the process called othering, which exposes people to great risk. People get the idea that HIV happens to somebody else; they "other" it away. They think it only happens to people from sub-Saharan Africa, heterosexuals or gay people; it does not happen to one's own group. As a result, people do not think there is a risk that is close to them and then they increase their exposure to risk.

Part of the challenge around HIV is that a person who has HIV but does not know he or she has it looks like everybody else. Do people understand that? What is people’s knowledge of what HIV is? People are sometimes exposed to greater risk due to a lack of knowledge and lack of awareness of the proximity to risk. One of the key areas around that is lack of education. Sexual health education is critical in changing people's attitudes and actions. As was said earlier, HIV is such an easily preventable condition. Building people's awareness and capacity is actually quite straightforward, but it involves education so that people can make decisions that will ensure they have really strong, positive sexual health lives and good health outcomes. This is phenomenally achievable, but it is about making sure we have an education system that provides sexual health education in a uniform and inclusive way, especially when we are talking about gay and bisexual people. It must be about involving everybody in the classroom, and they can see it is about everybody. In doing so, we will build the capacity of people to make the best decisions for themselves. Ultimately, how we radically change this is through group sexual health promotion - when people are able to take decisions into their own hands that will radically reduce their exposure to risk. Education lies utterly at the heart of that.

Do the figures presented to us today show that we have all missed that bus on one level? I applaud everything GLEN is doing. I have a text from a guy who is getting tested and is critical of the availability of times in Dublin. How do we get to a point at which Mr. Brady does not have to come in here? I mean this with the best will in the world, and I know GLEN is doing phenomenal work. I like Mr. Brady's phrase about positive sexual health lives. There is a generation of young people who feel they are immune to HIV and that it is not the death sentence it was before. How do we ingrain a different attitude into people's minds?