Mr. Tiernan Brady:

Deputy Kelleher asked about the barriers to accessing health care. We are aware of significant social barriers when it comes to sexual health in general. We want to try to mainstream sexual health, full stop, so that, as Dr. Lyons has said, it becomes normalised. There is another set of barriers lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people face, as they want to access services. The HSE commissioned research carried out by us in GLEN and BeLonG To, called Understanding LGBT Lives. From that document we have worked with the National Association of General Practitioners and the Psychiatric Nurses Association of Ireland to build those guidelines to try to build capacity at a health-care professional level to understand what those barriers are. They need to be aware that they have lesbian gay and bisexual patients and that those patients face significant social barriers when it comes to engaging on their sexual health.

Like all guidelines it is all about what we do with them. They can either sit on the shelf and gather dust or we can work out how to roll them out. We have been working with St. James's Hospital, the Mater Hospital and the Irish College of General Practitioners to roll them out throughout the country. It is about building capacity for health care professionals to understand what blocks people from dealing with their sexual health on weekly basis at primary care level in the same way they deal with other health issues they have.