Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Anti-Austerity Alliance)
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175. To ask the Minister for Health his plans to develop and adopt a comprehensive sexual and reproductive health policy for adolescents that would ensure sexual and reproductive health information, supplies and services are physically accessible and freely available to all young persons who require them; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40276/16]

Marcella Corcoran Kennedy (Offaly, Fine Gael)
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Ireland’s first National Sexual Health Strategy 2015 – 2020 and Action Plan 2015 – 2016 was launched in October 2015. The National Sexual Health Strategy aims to improve sexual health and well-being, and reduce negative sexual health outcomes by ensuring that everyone living in Ireland has access to high quality sexual health information, education and services throughout their lives. It takes a life-course approach to sexual health and represents the first nationally coordinated approach to improving the population’s sexual health and well-being.

The Strategy contains 71 recommendations that address a wide spectrum of sexual health services, and places strong emphasis on access to information and education. It signals a change in sexual health services from current provision, which has its origins in regional responses to specific sexual health issues, to a national strategy to provide high quality sexual health services to the whole population as required.

‘Sexual health promotion, education and prevention’ represents one of the three overarching domains in the Strategy, and was a priority in the 2015-2016 Action Plan. The Plan contains specific actions to support parents in engaging with their children on sexual health issues, and includes actions that aim to improve young people’s experience of sexual health education in the education system by providing better training and resources for teachers and youth workers.

The HSE Sexual Health and Crisis Pregnancy Programme is charged with implementing most of the National Sexual Health Strategy 2015–2020, and with developing and implementing a national strategy to address the issue of crisis pregnancy in Ireland. It aims to improve the effectiveness and impact of sexual health services and prevention, as set out in the National Sexual Health Strategy.