Dr. Salome Mbugua:

I would add to some of that, in particular on the development of the national action plan. We have met with many Ministers on the development of the plan. Our chair has worked quite a lot with us on the development of where we are now. She helped in the development of the 2012 Act and making that law a reality. We are saying that now needs to be reviewed. As members can see, it was established in 2012. It must be reviewed to ensure there are not gaps. We need to check where we are now, in an Ireland of 2022, compared to 2012 when it was implemented.

On the national action plan, we met with a Minister of State in the Department of Health in 2018 when the first case of FGM happened in the country. She had been asked by the Tánaiste at the time to meet with groups to check what needed to happen. We came up with the recommendations that we keep putting out there but unfortunately, that went out of discussion. We keep calling for the development of this national action plan to ensure that no child is subjected to female genital mutilation. We are very unfortunate because it seems nobody is actually helping us to make this happen or to develop that national action plan. It is very important that we do it. We have been moved around different Departments. First we were told it was the role of the HSE and then we were moved to Cosc and so on. We need commitment in this area to ensure it happens.