Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

Not all of the surgeries take place in Cork and Tallaght but the most complex ones do. I have expanded a scheme to treat women who require complex surgery abroad. It was the case that they would go abroad and get the funding back via the cross-border directive. We very quickly put in place a scheme whereby people could get funding upfront for such surgery in many clinics in the UK and Europe. I have actively asked clinicians in the HSE to visit two clinics in Athens and Bucharest that women report to me as being very good but which did not meet the criteria in the first instance. We are trying to expand services.

On 1 September this year, I held a patient voice forum in the Department of Health. The Chief Medical Officer, the CEO of the HSE and the chief nursing officer listened to the voices of 60 or 70 women with very complex and painful endometriosis. On 5 September, I put in place a new action plan, drawn up based on the needs of the women at that forum. From 1 October, we had a new plan for additional surgeries in Ireland to be carried out over three months. On 18 October, I launched a framework and plan to support women who are not able to get the scale of intervention they need here, so that they can get that help internationally while we collectively scale up our complexity on imaging and surgeries in Ireland.

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