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

On the issue of HPV herd immunity, we went down to a rate of 52% immunisation with girls. Where are we now with percentages of HPV vaccine uptake after all of the catch-up programmes? Are we still going up the graph as opposed to down the graph for uptake of the vaccine among young girls? Although I am very supportive of boys also getting the vaccine in September, it is very important to not take the eye off the girls because it will not work out if we do not keep the pressure on with the uptake among girls. I assume there is a robust team in place for marketing and awareness around the HPV vaccine to parents and for boys so that we do not end up in the type of situation previously that left a door open for people to attack the vaccine as a waste of money. I spoke at length with Professor Ian Frazer, a co-creator of the vaccine in Australia, about the barriers they came up against in terms of prejudice and scaremongering and about the savings to be made by using the 9-valent HPV vaccine, where two strains also deal with genital warts. The positives of using this vaccine is that younger boys tend to respond very well to knowing that a particular vaccine can stop a visible sexually transmitted infection, STI. Are we ready to go with the process of bringing in the boys' vaccine and are we definitely doing it right? We do not want the same pitfalls we had with the girls where there was an initial high rate for uptake and then it pulled back, and we could be back in the same situation again.

Dr. McKenna referred to rapid-access gynaecological clinics. Are we going to get one of these for the 20,000 to 30,000 people? How will we deal with the backlog of women waiting who are symptomatic and, as Deputy Donnelly has said, the next tranche of women who will come through as a result of the increased awareness? Members have spoken about the maternity strategy in recent years and about how many women's physical issues in obstetrics and gynaecology tend to be put on the long finger. There is the attitude that if a woman is able to cope and get through her day, then she will be fine. How are we dealing with that end of it with regard to the rapid-access clinics?