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

Following on from Deputy O'Reilly's comments, we heard at the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution from the Irish Family Planning Association that 17% of women outside the medical card cohort found the price of contraceptives, including consultation fees and prescriptions, to be an issue. Further to this, we learned at some stage on that committee of the huge expense of long-acting reversible contraception - for example, Mirena. People put it off because of the price. It is allowed under the drug payment scheme, but there is the insertion and so on. It is therefore worth noting, following on from Deputy O'Reilly's comments, that one in five women without a medical card has difficulty accessing contraception due to cost.