Kate O'Connell (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for being in and out between this meeting and the meeting of the justice committee. I also apologise if I ask questions which have already been asked. I know from Twitter that certain things have been asked. If I duplicate questions I ask the witnesses to let me know and I will look back later.

This morning, there was an article in the Irish Mirrorby Mikie O'Loughlin about the alleged refusal of the morning-after pill in a community pharmacy setting to a girl who claimed rape. As a community pharmacist I never realised it was my role when dispensing the morning-after pill to judge or to have any role with regard to how the unprotected sex happened. My understanding as a community pharmacist is our role is specifically on seeing whether the product is suitable and making sure that patient gets the service required. Perhaps whoever feels they are most qualified might comment on this. Perhaps it is a once off, but if it is going on in our community pharmacies it would be prudent for the HSE to have an advertising campaign, particularly in light of the Minister making the morning-after pill available at the weekend to medical card holders, which I do not believe was ever advertised. Perhaps there is an advertising campaign to be done on accessibility to emergency contraception. It is topical in light of recent discussions on the eighth amendment and some parliamentarians' views on self-certification or justification of termination of pregnancy in the case of rape.

The Minister is aware we spoke at the eighth amendment committee on the availability of free contraception, and it was raised by the Irish Family Planning Association that 18% of women, which is almost one in five, who are non-medical card holders have an issue with a price barrier when it comes to contraception. I thank the HSE for its response. Approximately €90 per year on contraception is the average amount reimbursed by the State per woman. Will the Minister let me know whether he is considering rolling this out and whether we have a timeline?

Another issue has come to my attention and I ask the witnesses to correct me on it if I am wrong. People used to get a medical card if they had cancer and this was taken away some years ago. I know from my previous role it was a great comfort to cancer patients and primary care providers that if someone had a bad diagnosis the GP could just write a prescription and the pharmacist would dispense it, and we would sort out the medical card payment element when we had dealt with the patient in a caring manner. It has come to my attention that it is now a discretionary card and there appear to be issues with people having to prove they have cancer. I am not big into anecdotal evidence, but I have heard that people are being required to justify getting the card by having to state they might definitely die, or they are definitely terminal or definitely at stage four. To me, particularly in the case of children with cancer, this is just not humane. It is not humane to ask parents to guarantee their children will be dead in 12 months so they will definitely be given a medical card. This is not the way to approach things. Can this be streamlined? Can there be a nicer and more holistic way of doing it? The way it used to happen four or five years ago worked really well. We all got paid and the patient got fixed up. I never heard as many complaints as I have heard recently.

The Vice Chairman raised the issue of a letter sent on HSE headed notepaper to Members of the Houses by Ciaran Sean Clarke, and I know it has been dealt with to some extent. Perhaps the HSE could let the committee know under what cases can staff employed by the HSE use headed notepaper. As a parliamentarian I am very conscious of what I put on personal and on headed notepaper.