Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the women, men and families who have come to the House today. I realise that, for them, it must be at least somewhat of an important step that there would be a formal State apology. It is an apology in words but is it an apology in deeds? We continue to outsource a vital health service and still women are being pursued by the State through the courts. Those two vital issues have not been changed one iota by the Government. Women are still not believed or assisted after all they have had to go through. The rights of the companies that profited from the issue continue to be placed before the rights of women in this country. What does it say that during this crisis, a group called Womens Lives Matter sprang up throughout the country? Is it not something else that women have to set up a group to tell the country their lives matter? That is exactly what has happened. Women's health, as we know, has been second place and second class in this country for a long time. The lack of communication during this crisis and the finding by Dr. Scally of medical misogyny constituted the Ireland of old, where male doctors often knew best and women were not consulted about their own healthcare.

The repeal the eighth campaign, the marriage equality campaign and the action of women in this campaign are positive developments in this country because they are a statement of the unwillingness of those who are being discriminated against to accept it any longer. One of the main slogans in the repeal campaign was, "Our bodies, our choice", which has been repeated thousands of times in recent years. So many spoke about the issue of not being heard or consulted about their own lives, health and future, and here we are again in the case of the women in question.

This is not unique to Ireland. Gender discrimination is an international feature of medicine. In the US, for example, there are 96 health schools but only nine run what are called women's health courses. There are many international statistics on the matter. In Ireland, such discrimination is particularly pronounced, given that there is a strongly patriarchal society, but moreover, the women in question have been victims of capitalism. A decision to outsource vital public screening was taken in the House by Fianna Fáil. While I do not know if Fine Gael voted for it at the time, it nonetheless carried it through. Others, including the former Socialist Party Deputy, Mr. Joe Higgins, spoke out against it at the time. The result, according to Dr. Scally, was that cost became more important than quality, while quality dropped as a weighting factor from 25% in 2008 to 15% in 2012. Price increased as a factor to 40% of the consideration for tendering in 2012. The outsourcing to laboratories thousands of miles away, whose work practices the Government is not privy to, has been the result. If the Government really is sorry, it should stop the outsourcing and commit to providing vital women's health and other health screening programmes through the public health service, and stop pursuing women in the courts.

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