Dr. Caitriona Henchion:

To return to my point when I was responding to Deputy O'Reilly, I would not like the response to be determined by what can be done quickly. It has to be a proper, organised roll-out of a scheme. I am concerned that if a rushed step was taken, it could be the only step taken for a long time. It might incentivise one method over others, even though that method has been shown not to be perfect. While nothing will be perfect, the working group report outlined research that showed that 18.8% of oral contraceptive users had failed to get a prescription on time. We know from James Trussell's research in the US the difference between perfect use, that is, in laboratory conditions where the user is handed the pill every day and the failure rate is 0.3%, and typical use, where the failure rate is 9%. The solution is not to target one method and incentivise it through one scheme-----