John Dolan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Senator Ruane, who has very graciously allowed me to kick off the first four minutes. I welcome the Minister of State and, in particular, Deputy Catherine Martin, who has given great leadership on this issue. I acknowledge that so many others in both Houses are responding positively to that.

I will start in Amsterdam, pass quickly through Bucharest and come back to rest here in Dublin. As a young teenager I read The Diary of Anne Frank, which was my first public understanding or reference to periods. She referred to her first period as her sweet secret. Whether it would always have been so for her is another day's work. It is notable that this subject can only be discussed in an open and public way on rare occasions. That was my first one. The rest of it was all boys' talk.

I was at a series of meetings relating to the European Disability Forum in Bucharest last weekend. I met Adriana Tontsch, a colleague who has been a champion for children with spina bifida and hydrocephalus in Romania. I had gone on a study visit with her many years ago where we visited various places and met families. Her work involved providing and funding shunts to drain fluid from babies' brains to save them. She took a call from a woman, which I did not understand. She told me afterwards that this was one of the mothers who said she could not come to the meeting that afternoon. I could not go to it either. It was a meeting with mothers and their children who are now coming into their teen years. The mother apologised for the fact that her daughter, who had just turned 11 - we will call her Nina for the sake of it - could not attend because she had just had her second period and her mother and her needed to support and mind each other. I said that this was a great coincidence because of what was happening in Ireland at that time. I reminded Adriana that she saved a child's life 11 years ago along with the lives of many others and now they are growing into young men and women who have a range of challenges. This issue will obviously be a challenge as well. Other contributors have referenced that in many ways.

Moving back to Ireland, Alannah Murray, who is a co-founder of Disabled Women of Ireland, made a few points to me. She asked me to highlight the figures showing that disabled people are more at risk of and experience more poverty, which clearly includes period poverty. Disabled people get periods. There are never any machines with sanitary products in disabled toilets. If a person with a disability such as a wheelchair user does manage to get into either a regular male or female toilet, the machines are always up too high and anyway being a wheelchair user or a person with restricted growth brings other issues. She said that Deputies might argue that in mentioning groups such as students, people in lower socioeconomic groups, etc., they were including people with disabilities. Boys, girls, men and women need to go hand in hand on this issue and be public on it. Products need to be available, as others have said, and free, and products need to be available in dispensing machines that are at the right height in disabled toilets.