Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the witnesses and their colleagues for coming here today, and for their work. Clearly, a lot of work has gone into this comprehensive report. It provides an excellent opportunity to debate the issues and various trade-offs.

There is a load of detail that I would love to get into with the witnesses. However, the question that people around Ireland and members of the public will have, and the question that I have been approached with by people who knew this session was coming up, is when will this happen. We have a good report, which and lays out the pros and cons, but it does not recommend a policy suite. There are some useful tensions between the various expert groups. People have different views but everyone is trying to achieve the same end and the debate is very useful. The fear is that while the debate continues in the meantime no money is allocated for budget 2020 and not enough happens.

Regarding implementation, is there an agreed timeline under which a package of interventions will be agreed? If so, when should the public start seeing a difference be it in the number of GPs with more training and knowledge, education in schools and for particular target groups, or free, partially free or more affordable contraception and so forth? When will the public, after whatever is decided, begin to see this happen for them? Is there an allocation in budget 2020 to pay for whatever is finally agreed?