Minister 'open' to extending free contraception to those under age of consent
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Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said he is “very open” to looking at extending the eligibility for free contraception to women aged under 17, the current age of sexual consent.
As part of Budget 2022, the Government announced that women aged 17 to 25 will be able to avail of free contraception from August.
The measure was widely welcomed by representative bodies, though questions have been raised as to why the eligibility was so narrow.
In France, for example, contraception has been free for those aged between 15 and 18 since 2013 and for the under-15s since August 2020. From next year, it will be free to under 25s.
Speaking at a briefing on the budget allocation today, Mr Donnelly said this measure is “just the start”.
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“You’ve got to start somewhere and this is the recommendation we have in terms of the best place to start. Can we go above that and below that? Absolutely, we can, and that’s something we will be looking at very carefully.”
A full year cost for the measure announced in the budget will be €28m, he added.
However, Minister of State Mary Butler said the age of consent is 17, and that they were “best placed” to have the age of free contraception within the legal parameters.
“Obviously we could be faced with legal challenges, and that is the rule of law here in the country, so I think the minister was quite right with the age he started it off with,” she added.
Mr Donnelly said he had not seen any advice from the attorney general in that regard, but he did not rule out the possibility that his department may have sought such advice on administering contraception to those under 17.
Some of the other initiatives outlined in the package include an increase in 19 ICU beds, €30m for health services for older people, and €250m to tackle acute and community waiting lists.
Waiting list numbers have soared in recent years, with the figure projected to top one million by the end of the year if no action is taken.
Mr Donnelly said a task force on the issue will be in place “very shortly”, adding that the department intends to do up individual plans for individual specialities and in individual hospitals to tackle the issue.
In terms of the total cost of reducing waiting lists to target levels, Mr Donnelly said they are going to have to see what impact the funding has first.
“What we’re doing is quite new. We’re going to have to see what kind of impact can be done with the funding already in place,” he said.
He added that there is already a Government agreement to target 150,000 additional cases of care this year in a bid to “stop the numbers going up”.
On bed capacity, he said there will be a combined additional 300 acute and community beds provided next year, though they are from the allocation from this year.
However, he acknowledged a need for a further increase in the provision of hospital beds.