Mr. Andrew Conlon:

To take the specific issue of the coil, I could not agree more. The report is explicit on the idea that having to buy the coil and then bring it back to the GP is an inconvenience, discourages people and so on. We need to change that. I think it only gets one line in the report but I had hoped that would be enough. From the group's point of view, that does not seem a sensible system to have, so I completely agree with the Senator. I am slightly disappointed with the Senator's disappointment, if I may put it that way. I had hoped this was one of the messages that would come through in the report. Again, it is explicitly stated in the report that it will spend a lot of time looking at economic and technical issues, but it acknowledges very early in the introduction the human rights and women's rights dimension in the context of the UN, the World Health Organization and so on. It is explicit about the gendered financial burden, in terms of both the cost of the products and the cost of crisis pregnancy in financial, emotional and health terms. The conclusion is explicit that, having gone through all the economic, technical and budgetary arguments, what we come back to is the rights issue, specifically the rights of women. This is associated with the consistency of policy and health benefits. I would have hoped women's rights would come through strongly in the report as a consideration but also, more than that, a driving force in looking at and changing policy in this area such that it is not about economics. The group - certainly I as the chair - did not want to advocate a particular course of action. That was not our role. Our role was to inform debates, provide evidence and identify policy options. I had hoped we had been successful in doing that. I take the point that the bulk of the report is about the technical side of budgets and budget management that reflects the practical concerns. I certainly would not want that to take away from that fundamental issue of rights. As a group of civil servants, however, we believe those questions of rights and so on are very much in the domain of political decisions for the Oireachtas, the Minister, the Government and so on. All we were trying to do was inform debate. What the report in some way suggests is a slight warning. Looking at this economically, as Deputy Donnelly has hinted at, it is hoped we can bring down the current figure, which stands at between €80 million and €100 million. It is multi-year and expensive.