Women on IVF courses can apply for funding
Couples already in treatment can avail of State cash for private services in September of next year, says Minister for Health
COUPLES who have undergone IVF but have not been able to conceive yet will be able to apply for State funding for private treatment from next year, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly confirmed this weekend that the Government will make funding available for private IVF treatment next year.
He told the MoS: ‘I’m allocating money for next year to help with women, with couples who are accessing private care. Our aim is to start that from September. Exactly how that will work in terms of criteria, rounds and so forth, we will now work through in the next few months.’
This funding is separate to the
‘Going to move to a fairer, more equal space’
€10m the minister announced earlier this week that would be allocated to provide public IVF services in the final four months of next year.
Ireland is the only country in the EU that does not publicly fund IVF treatment, which costs between €4,500 to €6,500 per cycle. However, many women need to undergo several cycles for the treatment to be successful, putting IVF financially beyond the reach of many.
Mr Donnelly said: ‘It simply isn’t fair that there are couples in this country who desperately want to have a child and because it is so expensive to do so, can’t even try. I’m determined that we’re going to move to a much fairer, much more equal space.
‘We’re phasing it in from next year. What we have done in Budget 2023 is allocate money to begin building up the public system. Over the last year and a half we have established six fertility hubs around the country. They’re going to be the starting point for building up publicly delivered IVF services and publicly delivered fertility services.
‘However, that wouldn’t give us the result that we need quickly enough as it’s going to take several years to build up the full public system.’
Meanwhile, the
National Infertility
Support and Information Group (NISIG) has said at least €30m should be made available to the State-funded scheme in 2024.
The support group also insisted that the scheme be rolled out as soon as possible.
NISIG chair Caitríona Fitzpatrick told the MoS: ‘If it could come in sooner than September 2023, then great. But we also want it done right as well, with as broad a reach of people as possible.
‘The first thing that will need to happen is to find out how many people are actually seeking IVF in Ireland at the moment.
‘Because, until now, it has all been by private clinics, there are very few HSE or department stats on the area.
‘It’s an issue that people
really don’t speak about as well.
‘There are some figures from 2019 which suggest that there were 11,500 cycles of IVF completed in that year in Ireland, but they don’t say if some people had multiple rounds, whether the cycles were successful, nothing like that.
‘We hope that as the only support group for people seeking IVF, that we would be very much consulted on what happens now.’
Ms Fitzpatrick said Ireland is an outlier in terms of providing IVF services, with the nation placed 40th out of 43 European countries.
Ms Fitzpatrick said: ‘This is clearly unacceptable. This week’s announcement is significant in moving Ireland from the bottom of the class to more in line with our European colleagues. We need a public health system that works for those who experience issues with fertility in Ireland.
‘Many people who are currently undergoing treatment or saving hard for fertility treatment, which is hugely costly, will have heard this [week’s] news and are now very anxious to know what it means for them,’ she said.
‘Minister Donnelly said there would be collaboration with the industry and stakeholders around this announcement, and this must begin immediately.
‘There are no public services around IVF treatment, therefore we need to tease out how the proposed funding will work, who will be eligible for it and a significant number of other related issues.’
Ms Fitzpatrick said she hopes that Ireland can follow the example of
‘Until now, it has all been by private clinics’
countries like France and Belgium which offer the ‘very best’ in IVF treatment, providing up to six fully funded cycles of IVF or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), where an embryologist injects a single sperm into the egg to assist fertilisation.
France has also become one of the latest countries to give gay and single women the same rights to fertility treatment as heterosexual couples.