Patricia Stephenson (Social Democrats)

I appreciate all of the different actions and steps and I know that women’s health is coming along in Ireland.

I have questions around things like gender sensitivity training. Are all staff receiving that in the new systems and units that we are opening up? Will there be a subsequent plan? This might not be something the Minister of State can answer today but the Minister for Health can come back to me on it. How will the learnings from this plan be integrated into that?

How are we measuring the real-world impact of these changes to women’s healthcare? I speak to women all the time who are still travelling to Romania and other countries for basic women’s healthcare. We need to be measuring the reduction in that regard and using it as a metric to measure the success in our own systems. It is about feedback because even if these units exist, we need feedback from woman accessing those units and healthcare professionals if they are not being treated with equality and respected in that space. Part of it is probably due to the fact our healthcare system is overstretched. Many doctors do not have the time, perhaps, to give the level of care they would like to give.What is happening then is that women are falling by the wayside within that space. We have had this long-term existing issue that our understanding of health comes from the default of men's health because that is how our research has always been. I would like to see what steps we will be taking coming into the next year.