Women's Health Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-15 ============================================================ Patricia Stephenson (SD), Labour Panel I thank the Minister of State for coming in. I wish to discuss the third phase of the women's health task force and action plan. Women's health has been neglected for too long in Ireland. Our pain has been minimised. Our voices are absent from medical research. Since my time as a Senator, I have been contacted by many women who have shared their health journeys with me. It is usually stories of frustration, long delays, disbelief at the system, disappointment and the experience of medical gaslighting. Some women outlined the impossible positions they have been put in financially that they cannot afford essential medication needed to manage their conditions. I have raised the question of Ryeqo with the Minister for Health and its funding through the drugs repayment scheme. The action plan expands the GP programme for endometriosis diagnosis. I am grateful for that, but I am unclear if this is going to be mandatory for all GPs and if this is going to extend to all women's health conditions or specifically endometriosis. If a GP is not trained in women's health and gynaecology and if he or she is not listening to a patient or do not believe her, how are such women going to get a referral, and ultimately a diagnosis? Why do we not have more GPs across the country who can recognise the symptoms of polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, PMOS, adenomyosis and endometriosis, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, PMDD, and send patients for appropriate tests. The task force does not go far enough to increase the number of expert gynaecologists providing front-line care. We are still sending women abroad. What is the Department is doing to attract expert clinicians to provide for women's health in Ireland? I was recently contacted by a woman called Aisling who had a successful endometriosis treatment in Ireland after undergoing the EndoSure test in the UK, which diagnosed her with both endometriosis and adenomyosis. Initial tests in Ireland found nothing wrong with her, so her GP would not refer her on to a consultant. She was fobbed off with hormonal contraceptives, which did absolutely nothing. She had to pay out of pocket for the tests in the UK. Aisling did find an excellent GP who helped her get treatment, but GPs like this seem to be rare. Will the HSE be looking into and investigating the EndoSure testing procedure for Ireland? Will she provide a timeline for exploring that and doing that investigation? It could drastically improve diagnosis for endometriosis and adenomyosis in Ireland. I wish to highlight a very worrying aspect regarding the treatment of women-specific conditions. I have talked about medical gaslighting before. There is also the issue of gatekeeping. I have been contacted by women whose GPs are refusing to send them to gynaecologists. There are clinicians in the private health system who refuse to sign off on medical forms so women can avail of the endometriosis surgery abroad interim scheme, ESAIS. Women have been told that the pain in their heads or just bad periods. I am sure the Minister of State has heard similar things in her experience. It is kind of part of the ongoing oppression of women in Ireland that their pain is downplayed and they refuse to get objective investigation into their systems. I welcome the prominent role that endometriosis has in this action plan. We still have no official statistics in Ireland about how long women are waiting for diagnosis and finally to be told that the pain is not in their heads and their pain is real. I am pleased to hear of the roll-out of the State-funded in vitro fertilisation, IVF, for women with endometriosis who are experiencing fertility issues. It is something that I have called for in this Chamber before. It is important, therefore, that we get early diagnosis for endometriosis instead of women languishing for years in pain, by which time they might have aged out of the eligibility for the IVF scheme. I wish to ask about some of the elements that are missing from the plan. There is no mention of adenomyosis, PMDD and PMOS, which was previously known as polycystic ovary syndrome, PCOS. These are all hormone related conditions affecting women which are poorly understood. The plan has some mental health initiatives, which I am sure the Minister of State engaged with as well in her capacity. The commitments to suicide and self-harm reduction are brilliant. I am not sure if that strategy is going to incorporate PMDD. Will it be taking holistic care and interdisciplinary care into account? I also welcome the national menstrual health awareness campaign. Again, linked to that, is that going to include PMDD? Up until that point, it has been missing. Is that going to link into the Department of education in secondary schools to ensure that menstrual health and PMDD are being taught to girls and boys equally? There is a commitment to pledge €2 million into research, which is fantastic. Is that going to be multi-annual funding for women's research? We have a huge gender gap when it comes to women's research in Ireland. Ireland is not awash with senior academics in women's health. We have loads of early and mid-career people who are fantastic. How can we build them up to ensure that the funding in place for their academic research to prosper? I welcome the perinatal mother and baby unit. We have spoken about this in Chamber before. How can we extend that? Perinatal is obviously acute crisis. What are we doing to expand the postnatal supports into the community? The Year of Care campaign has called for a year of holistic support. That is focused community support, both physically but also mental recovery from the birth. We need to get to that stage in Ireland. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-07-15/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:52:16+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-15