Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats)
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805. To ask the Minister for Health the rationale for not implementing a recommendation to remove oral sex as a reason for differing gay men, bisexual men, transgender men and men who have sex with men from blood donation as recommended by the Social Behaviours Review Group; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [17935/22]

Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats)
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806. To ask the Minister for Health the status of plans to introduce an individualised risk assessment for blood donation; the timescale for same; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [17936/22]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 805 and 806 together.

The remit of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service (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.

Following a review of existing donor deferral policy by an independent expert group last year, the IBTS announced a range of changes to their existing deferral policies, including those concerning Men who have Sex with Men (MSM).

The objective of these policy changes is to move towards an individual assessment process for donors, making blood donation more inclusive. As a prerequisite to this, the existing paper-based Health and Lifestyle Questionnaire (HLQ) will be replaced with an electronic Self-Assessment Health History (SAHH) questionnaire.

The IBTS announced that the first phase of these policy changes to began on March 28th of this year. This initial phase reduced the existing 12-month deferral period for MSM to 4 months. This next phase involving the replacement of the HLQ with the SAHH is expected to take place in Q3 of this year, with the individual assessment system to follow later in the year once the SAHH is established.

The IBTS has advised that the 4 month deferral period is an interim measure to be kept in place until the Individualised Donor Risk Assessment can be carried out on all donors.The IBTS has determined that oral sex between MSM is one of a number of sexual behaviours which will be taken into consideration in this assessment,  and that this approach was previously taken by the UK Blood Services with the introduction of the FAIR system of individual assessment.