Ms Deirdre Seery:

Local radio is fantastic because it is immediate and people listen to the campaign. Local works.

With regard to Deputy Neville's comments on mental health, we know that if young people are anxious about their sexual health it will have an impact on their mental health. Good sexual health has a knock-on effect on mental health. One of the services that my centre is involved in is the youth health service, which provides a counsellor half-time for a year who works on providing support to young people, not just on sexual health but also on mental health. We hope to continue with the programme. Having gay-friendly and youth-friendly services makes a difference to people's overall health and not just their sexual health.

With regard to testing and stigma, I have been in this business a long time, yet I am still surprised by how quickly things change. When we conducted tests in a gay bar the other night - and GOSHH has conducted tests in saunas - I thought to myself that people will not walk around wearing a little plaster on their finger, thus letting everybody know that they had taken a test, but they did. Outreach testing breaks down the stigma; it is working, and we are normalising testing. I look forward to carrying out a pilot programme with Dublin, because my centre conducted outreach testing in Limerick and Cork for three years.

A question was asked about how our tests are funded. We did not get funding so we charged people who could pay €50 for a test. Anyone who could not pay got the test for free and those who could pay a bit still got a test. That is almost the definition of a not-for-profit service. We work in the NGO sector so we must be innovative and learn from what happens in Europe. I am very involved in European initiatives. When I see that something works in Europe then we have to try it here and, invariably, it becomes mainstream. This pilot will become mainstream.