Frank Feighan (Sligo-Leitrim, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Sherlock for raising this issue and giving me the opportunity to speak on it on behalf of the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly.

I agree that it is great to see school children in here today after a two year absence. They give the House a great sense of vitality. I am delighted to see them here today and I hope they enjoy their tour of Leinster House.

The remit of the IBTS is to provide a safe, reliable and robust blood service to the Irish health system. A major objective of the IBTS is to ensure that it always has the necessary programmes and procedures in place to protect both the recipients and the donors of blood and blood products. As Senator Sherlock is aware, following a review of existing donor deferral policy by an independent expert group last year, called the social behaviours review group, the IBTS announced a range of changes to its existing deferral policies, including those concerning gay and bisexual men who have sex with men. The objective of these policy changes is to move towards an individual assessment process for donors, making blood donation more inclusive, and to welcome additional donors.

The IBTS has committed to a phased approach to the introduction of these policy changes. Phase one involves reducing the 12-month deferral period for gay and bisexual men who have sex with men to 4 months. This was introduced by the IBTS last Monday 28 March. This first phase is an interim measure for lowering barriers to donation while extensive technical system upgrades are made. These upgrades will replace the existing paper-based health and lifestyle questionnaire with an electronic self-assessment health history questionnaire. This will present donors with a series of questions which they will answer on a "Yes" or "No" basis, with specific responses triggering secondary questions, facilitating the process of individual assessment. Phase two is the introduction of the individual risk assessment system similar to system introduced by the UK Blood Services in June 2021, known as FAIR, or for the assessment of individualised risk. This individualised risk assessment will include several aspects of sexual behaviour and will apply to all blood donors. The IBTS is working towards introducing this second phase later this year.

The aim of these changes is to make blood donation more inclusive and to welcome additional donors from the LGBT+ community. It is therefore essential that this progress is communicated clearly and concisely to the public. In that regard, the donor eligibility criteria changes effective from last Monday, 28 March received widespread coverage across traditional and social media. Indeed, I heard a discussion on it on the radio yesterday on my way up to Dublin. The IBTS also issued a press release and highlighted the changes across its various social media platforms. The IBTS advised that it has made changes to its website to reflect the new criteria and confirmed that all donor information documentation has been updated to reflect these changes. The Minister welcomes the decision of the board of the IBTS to introduce these changes and commends it on its progress in making blood donation more inclusive while ensuring the safe supply of blood in Ireland.Senator Sherlock compared the four-month waiting list with the three-month waiting list in the UK. I will raise that matter with the Minister.

I have found in various Departments that we sometimes put things up on social media and do not follow up on them with a robust measurement of how many followers we have or anything like that. I sometimes wonder, even when information is put up on social media, whether we try to get that information to the groups that matter. Departments need to be able to sell that a bit better.