Mary O'Rourke (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)

It does not matter what she supports, she has a formidable intellect and a pioneering spirit. She ensured the Crisis Pregnancy Agency moved along with its difficult remit when it was set up during difficult times. Ms Catherine Bulbulia is the present director and she is equally formidable in intellect and acumen. She appeared before the Committee on the Constitutional Amendment on Children and I was struck by the vast range of research and consultation the agency has done. Such work needs that level of research because it is about more than accounting or talking to someone. It is real research that is to be supported.

The agency has helped cause a decrease in the numbers of women travelling to Britain for abortions and has also included the route to the Netherlands. There has been a recorded decrease of 30% in the number of women travelling from Ireland to Britain for abortions and a 20% fall in the number of births to teenagers, a significant achievement. We all love to thump our chests and claim we disagree with abortion, and most political parties do not agree with it, but for many years we turned a blind eye to the number of women travelling to Britain for abortions. An agency that can tackle those numbers deserves our praise. There has been a 43% decrease in the number of teenagers travelling from Ireland to Britain for abortions.

The agency has established many other campaigns and put in place a counselling service, with 14 service providers and free services in 50 locations nationwide, providing a range of choices for potential clients, increasing the number of hours and making a real difference to women of all ages because crisis pregnancies do not just happen to teenagers but to women right into their 40s.

Those who have spoken to me about the agency's work tell me its help is hugely important to those who find themselves in difficulties, and I applaud the work it has done. How can we guarantee this fine work will not be shoved under some other subhead of the health budget when the going gets tough for the HSE? We should guard against that.

I attended a briefing in Buswell's Hotel a year ago at which the Headway initiative was launched. This was a service for young people who were experiencing mental health problems. Money was provided for that in a subhead, but it disappeared and no one knows where it went. I am not saying it was purloined, it simply disappeared as if it had never been granted. This was because it was an easy target for the number crunchers in the Health Service Executive. I do not want the Crisis Pregnancy Agency becoming an easy target for those who wish to purloin its subhead moneys. When it is absorbed into the Health Service Executive, I want its budget and finances to remain at what they were set for this year.

The agency has recently embarked on a fine consultation process with young people on sexual health from which it will have a report by the end of 2009. It is endeavouring to show to young people that it is not cool to have early and unprotected sex. It is, in fact, most unmodern and wrong. The agency is not claiming it is wrong in a moral sense because it does not, quite rightly, go into that area which is for another arm of civic society. It is not correct that young people do not know or learn about properly conducted relationships in education classes. In such classes, they can be alerted to the fact that just because one wants to keep up with one's peers does not mean one has to have easy sex with whatever guy crosses one's path. It is most unmodern and most uncool to so engage.

The Women's Health Council, which I established during my short tenure at the Department, has made great advances in bringing many important health matters concerning women to the forefront. I look forward to hearing the Minister of State's responses to my questions.

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