Maria McCormack (Sinn Fein)

Today, the Sinn Féin team will bring the first ever motion on endometriosis care to Dáil Éireann. I am so proud of this motion. Since I first rose to speak about endometriosis and Women's Health Week on 5 March, so many women have reached out to me. We have held nine public meetings and engaged with thousands of women. We heard harrowing stories of the failures they experienced from women and girls, some nine or 14 years old, including women missing parts of their vital organs because we do not have the care in Ireland. I look forward to the debate this evening. I really hope that the Government will support the motion and will support these women.

Endometriosis affects one in ten women in Ireland, so this is not just a small number of women. They are our mothers, sisters and daughters. We all know ten women. We have to stop leaving these women suffer in silence. It is taking an average of nine years for these women to get a diagnosis and it is not acceptable any more. These women have to leave the country on a daily basis to get the care they should be able to get in Ireland. Their stories are just harrowing. The motion was built on the lived experiences of these women. No one can debate those lived experiences. I really look forward to having a debate, hopefully, in the Seanad on the care of endometriosis patients in Ireland.

The second issue I will raise is the passport application process. It is very specific to a query I had in my constituency of Laois, where a mam reached out to me a number of weeks ago. She had applied for a passport for her baby.However, the passport was rejected because the Passport Office was not able to get in contact with the Garda station. She then moved it to the Garda station in Portlaoise and applied again. Last week, she was going to get the passport cancelled again because the Passport Office could not get in contact with the Garda station. Portlaoise Garda station is working to the best of its ability. They are in a temporary station while their station gets done up. Obviously, safety comes first. We do not expect them to sit and man the phones all day. This mam went into the station and asked the garda to call the Passport Office, which they did. The Passport Office said it could not accept a call from the garda calling them. They needed to ring the Garda station. The garda asked if they could call within 45 minutes and they said, "No." It is really farcical. We are expecting gardaí to be responsible for queries in a Passport Office when these are our front-line workers. There has to be a way to have a better process. This woman will end up losing out on her holiday and lots of money because a contact could not be made in a Garda station. It is just unacceptable.