I welcome the Bill. It is great to see progress in the area but an opportunity was missed to make the scheme accessible to everyone. Similar to my colleagues, one of the main issues I have is the age scope of the Bill. I am glad the national women's health action plan includes a commitment to expanding the age scope but this needs to be a firm commitment and it needs to happen sooner rather than later. We need free contraceptives to be offered to women of all ages. The National Women's Council of Ireland undertook a survey of 500 women that was published this year. It found one in three still faces barriers to accessing the free contraceptive scheme - women in the Traveller community, women from migrant communities, women with disabilities. Reproductive health and contraception should be accessible to all; there should not be any barriers, particularly for women from marginalised or vulnerable communities. I hope the Minister of State, Deputy Collins, will continue to review the scheme to ensure that happens. I want to talk more broadly about women's health. There is a huge problem with women's health, not just in Ireland but globally. There is insufficient funding, research and trust. It is not given the attention it needs. We are seeing some progress in women's health getting more attention but there is much more of a journey to go on that. Women are left suffering from invisible illnesses for years without diagnosis, treatment or even being believed. The best example of that is endometriosis. My inbox was flooded in the past couple of weeks with people suffering from endometriosis or adenomyosis, which I was not aware of but which is a similar and equally debilitating condition. Symptoms are being dismissed, treatment is inaccessible and life is being made unliveable. Roughly one in ten women in Ireland has endometriosis. Many of these women struggle to be seen and just to be diagnosed. Often, their disorder is dismissed as simply period pains. A study a few years ago found it takes a woman an average of nine years to be diagnosed with endometriosis in Ireland. That is nine years of not being believed, of being in pain and of essentially putting life on hold. These are often young women. It is really not acceptable. It is a horrific disorder and it has a huge impact on those living with it. It can take their independence, leave them with limited mobility and bind them to their homes. They miss out on work, on family events and, really, on life itself. It is a gruelling disorder and we need to start giving it the attention and funding it deserves and calls for. We cannot continue to fail women when it comes to women's health matters. I ask that the Government put a large focus on treatment of those conditions.

Sentiment score: 0.04