Paul Murphy says bill fails to deliver public funding for IVF

I welcome the bill and the establishment of the authority as a very late and small step towards tackling the reality of Ireland as being in the wild west when it comes to fertility care. I think that the problem is that the bill doesn't do anything in terms of the public provision of fertility care in particular IVF and therefore doesn't really address the key issue here which is the fact that Ireland is according to a report launched by Fine Gael MEP no less Francis Fitzgerald the fourth worst in all of Europe in terms of the provision of fertility care and the only country in the European Union which doesn't provide any public funding for the provision of IVF and you know this isn't obviously a new issue this isn't a new procedure and IVF was included in the list of universal health care entitlements to be introduced under Sláinte care and in the 2017 Sláinte care report according to the report a universal health system means one that is accessible to all on the basis of need free at the point of delivery or at the lowest possible cost so therefore this should clearly apply to IVF as a universal health care entitlement and nothing has been done to progress this despite Sláinte care nominally being a thing that oh everybody across the party spectrum across politics supposedly all agrees to. Since 2016 when now Tániste Leo Varadkar first promised public funding for IVF we've heard repeated promises from successive health ministers to publicly fund IVF but nothing has happened over the last five years and no timeframe for public funding of IVF has yet been provided by the Department of Health. What does that mean for people and the impact is immense on a lot of people just you're not talking about a small group of people here something like one in six couples experience fertility issues on a yearly basis and it looks like about 11,000 IVF cycles are carried out which would probably translate to about 5,000 or 6,000 couples on a yearly basis. And that's those who can afford it in the context of the current absolutely unaffordable astronomically high prices for that fertility treatment. And I think for a lot of people look this is something that is personal it's in their relationship they're struggling to have a kid and they don't necessarily want to speak out personally publicly about it they don't want to speak to reporters about it or whatever and also for some there can be a certain residual stigma. And it's really it's a situation where people shouldn't have to speak out and but unfortunately in this situation where the government ignores this issue refuses to provide the funding as part of the provision of a proper publicly funded National Health Service people have had no choice but to speak out about their export experiences to make this real. And a whole number of people for example spoke to the noteworthy investigation at the end of last year and I really commend them for doing so for speaking out about their personal experience to make this real and to explain what having a cost of literally tens of thousands of euros the debt the stress on their relationship and so on what that means for them. So I want to add my experience to that list of experiences and the experience of my partner and so we've been going through IVF for the last over a year now and just even putting the money aside and we'll come back to the issue of money it's a huge stress on people. It's a huge stress on my partner above all she's the one who has to get all the hormone injections she's the one who has to go through the disappointment when it doesn't work at the end of a cycle and then the discussion about oh do you go again and not that cycle of raise expectations lower expectations the disruption in terms of work in terms of the time that has to be taken to go to the clinic again and again the disruption in terms of just life on a daily basis you have to do throughout like different cycles you have to do like she has to be stuck with a syringe by me twice a day or during certain parts of the of the of the cycle and and it's just it's a it's a huge burden and on her in particular and but on the on the couples and on you know on couples as a as a whole. But then you come to the issue of the of the money because that's that's hard enough you know for people to have to go through that in order to be able to give themselves the best chance of having a child. And but then you have the cost associated and like I've heard many people talk about the kind of costs here and to be honest they haven't looked into it enough because they're talking about all the average cost is 4000 euro 5000 euro 6000 euro. But that's like that's the average cost on the price list of what it costs have IVF but what people don't realize is that you have to do a whole bunch of other stuff that's also on these that the price list in order for the IVF to actually work. So already you're talking about significantly more money. So we've already spent maybe 12,000 euros we could end up spending more money and it may or may not work at the end of it. And and we just have to remember that for lots and lots and lots of people you know regardless of whether they want to have kids that they do want to have kids they simply cannot afford to do it. And therefore by not having public provision of IVF the government is saying to them well no we have unequal access to you get having the best chance you can of having a child. And that is just absolutely morally wrong that that is determined by how much wealth someone has for other people of course they go into huge amounts of debt or the extra stress that that adds onto their lives and onto their relationships. So it's simply not acceptable to continue how it is going and what we need is to have public provision free as part of a national health service of fertility care up to and including IVF. I want to make some points in relation to that because the government when they've spoken about it has spoken about having public provision through the public system rather than being outsourced to private clinics. But for example the clinical director of Marian fertility professor Mary Wingfield has said there is absolutely no infrastructure or trained staff to provide the complex treatment of IVF and ICSI in our public facilities. So in her opinion quote it would most likely need to be outsourced to private clinics. That continues with the problem okay fine we'll have a regulatory authority but the problem of having for profit medicine especially in such an area where you have people encouraged to pay for all sorts of stuff that isn't medically proven as adding anything is a horrendous situation. But also then by the public simply paying for this outsourcing huge extra costs from the point of view of ordinary people why because of the impact of profit and but if you also just take our current health system and say okay we're going to going to provide IVF and it's just that our current under resourced health system where we're also going to run into trouble because then we'll have two tier access and which is bad in all sorts of circumstances of medicine in many circumstances where time is of the essence. But time is of the essence here and you'll have a situation where in theory maybe you can sign up for IVF but you're going to be on a list for two or three years or whatever and as people who are going through it will know obviously the chances of having a child successfully at a certain point in time just drop precipitously and a year or two makes a very very big difference. So again unless you provision provide for a property employ the proper staff and bring the knowledge in-house into the public system well then you're going to perpetuate a two tier system. Final point I make is that I do think this is linked to the question of separation of church and state. I think it's not an accident that Ireland is the only country in the EU without public provision considering the church dominance of our hospitals. The Catholic Church remains completely opposed to IVF and yet the government continues to want to hand over ownership of the new national maternity hospital to effectively the church. So there needs to be separation of church and state the building of a properly funded national health service free from any influence of the church whatsoever and ensuring that sufficient resources are put in so that everyone can have an equal access. Look we're all born differently and that can create problems for certain couples means it's more difficult for some couples to have children than others but with the benefits of modern medicine we can go a significant way to helping people overcome those difficulties but then we add an extra burden which is say you have to have a bunch of money or you have to be willing to go or be able to go and be willing to go into a bunch of debt to be able to do it. That is absolutely wrong and the government can address it but unfortunately significant campaigning looks like it's going to be necessary to put pressure on the government to do so.