Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

It is unusual to be here today and not talk about student nurses with the Minister of State, as we have done every week for goodness knows how long at this point. It is a different topic today.

I welcome the spirit of this motion. I thank the Green Party for putting this forward. We need access to contraception and it is high time we sorted this out. I know we have talked about it and there is a phased approach in the programme for Government. I am, however, deeply concerned about how sometimes when we do things step-by-step, we can get stuck on a step, and the impact if we do this and then do not move any further and have the cut-off at 25 years of age.

As a member of the Labour Party, I am proud of our party's history on matters on contraception. Many a former Labour Party Deputy or Senator found his or her voice to be in the minority opinion when speaking about this issue in the not-too-distant past. I am proud of the role we have played in advocating for the access to and decriminalisation of contraception.

One of the most significant interventions was made by Deputy Howlin, who legislated for the legal sale of condoms in Ireland in 1993 when he was Minister for Health. It is not that long ago. Even I was alive in 1993. It was really not terribly long ago that we were only legalising the sale of condoms. It is a particular issue the student movement is terribly proud of. We were putting condom vending machines into buildings and they were being torn out of bathrooms and such, and the great student battle went on to have access to condoms. The issue was that the then Minister did not suggest it only needed to be made available to people aged under 25.

When the former Labour Party Deputy for Limerick city, Jan O'Sullivan, spoke about providing free contraception, she referenced that providing it only to women aged 17 to 24 would be considered the wrong approach. She said on the record that:

I welcome that a report has finally been produced outlining pathways to providing free contraception in Ireland. However, it is not acceptable that only a certain cohort – women aged 17-24 – would receive free contraception. [...]

As a country we can’t just provide free contraceptive pills or condoms and think that we have done a good job. A comprehensive provision of the full range of methods, including long-acting reversible contraceptives such as the copper coil and implant, would cost less in the long run than the provision of short-acting methods alone. Evidence suggests that the overall cost to the State would fall year on year as women and girls switch to more reliable and cost-effective methods.

There is no one-size fits all approach to contraception – what works for one person may not work for another. This is our one change to get the provision of contraception right for all women, not just a chosen few and we need to make sure it is done right.

These sentiments around the full range of contraceptive methods we need have been echoed in the room already, particularly more long-term ones which, certainly, when I was younger, were not talked about a huge amount. It is important, however, to recognise that we do not lock people out of this and there is a firm commitment to going beyond. Senator Clifford-Lee asked what next steps are. What commitment is being made to move this to being universally available to all those who need it, rather than it just being acceptable? We are not back in the 1960s.

The working group on access to contraception made it plain in its report. The committee recommends, "The introduction of a scheme for the provision of the most effective method of contraception, free of charge and having regard to personal circumstances, to all people who wish to avail of them within the State." The recommendation was that everyone should be able to access them. The most adversely affected would be women who find themselves aged out of access to free contraception but still stuck in the economic reality of being unable to afford to access it privately. That position can be dealt with if there are no particular age limits.

I hope the thinking is not that all women over the age of 25 will have the means to purchase contraception, or that they have reached an age where safe sex does not need to be practised. I do not think that is the assumption. Perhaps, however, sometimes people looking in might believe that is the assumption the Government is putting forward. I really want to drive in on that. I want to know what we are going to do for people over the age of 25 and what the plan is over the next couple of years to make contraception accessible to all.

Obviously, contraception being accessible is a preventive measure. We have talked much about that here. I believe everyone recognises that. I know more women, however, who have accessed contraception for medical and health reasons rather than for "sexy time", or whatever one wishes to call it.

My own experience of this numbers more than 22 years. I am only in my early 30s so that gives an idea of how young I was when I had to begin this battle with my health. It has taken me until my early 30s to find a doctor who said I deserve both physical health and sexual well-being. It has been a long journey to find someone who was willing to work with me to find something that worked with my body to deal with medical issues, and that other parts of my life should not have to suffer. I hope that when we make it more available and normalised for people to be able to access contraception at a much younger age, not only will it deal with their sexual well-being but also the enormous physical well-being benefits. I know we sometimes think of contraception as being for one particular area. Many women, however, will actually say they have to use it for medical reasons to manage their well-being.

Senator O'Reilly spoke succinctly around the importance of preventive measures so I do not need to go into all the facts and figures again; she outlined them well. I want to highlight the importance of long-acting reversible contraceptives, LARC, which I mentioned before. Certainly, when I was starting out in college or in my teens, it was not talked about. That set women and young girls my age onto a cycle of expensive monthly prescriptions and doing all sorts of things. I would certainly speak in favour of that as an option if it is one that will work for women.

We spoke about the Repeal the 8th campaign. During that campaign, I remember meeting three women in their mid- to late 30s who were done with having their families and having children. They had their children and did not want any more. Their local GPs in rural areas refused to give them a prescription for contraception. Those three women from different parts of the country all ended up pregnant. They did not want to have any more children or continue their families. At the time, they ended up going down the road of availing of the Internet to access abortion care. Obviously, we do not have to do that now.

When we talk about contraception, however, we also need to talk about some of the assumptions made around contraception. People genuinely need to be able to access contraception. That conversation, perhaps, needs to happen with GPs around people and their family planning, and a woman's right to be empowered to decide when she has had her family or, indeed, that she does not wish to start a family.It was only three years ago that this was happening.

I want to reiterate the points I made about education. We need a proper sex education curriculum that is inclusive of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, LGBT, community. We need to do proper work on people having healthy sexual relationships that are built on trust and consent. It is too late to begin consent conversations at third level. I was involved in the student movement and I came up with the hashtag #AskConsent for that campaign. That precludes an awful lot of people because not everyone goes on to third level. While we are discussing access to contraception, we also need to discuss access to informative, reliable sex education from a younger age. To reiterate my earlier point, I know of women my age who still find themselves trekking around towns trying to find pharmacies in which they can access the morning-after pill.

It is great that we are having this conversation, and I welcome this motion from the Green Party. I would love to hear how we are going to make sure that everyone can access contraception. The motion highlights the fact that in many places there is still a long way to go in the context of women being able to access contraception in their local pharmacies when they want to do so. We also have a long way to go when it comes to providing healthy and informative sex education for younger people so that we will not have to deal with it when they are older or when they reach third level.