Fertility clinics here rake it in but pandemic limits options for couples
ON THE OBSCENE COST OF IVF IN IRELAND
IN amongst the doom and gloom, a pandemic can throw up some accidental success stories. For instance, the fertility business appears to be booming – with a reported 20% increase in demand over the last year.
There are a few reasons for the surge in interest, they reckon. One is all that money some people have been saving during the lockdowns, For those struggling to conceive, it’s been a chance to store up some cash to help with the very large bills that come with any kind of fertility treatment in this country.
Another is that because house prices have gone up so much, young people, through no fault of their own, have been slower to buy their first home.
And by the time they’ve been lucky enough to get a mortgage, they’re then finding it difficult to get pregnant.
And then there’s the travel issue. All those people who would have gone abroad to clinics in places like Spain or the Czech Republic, not only because they’re cheaper but because of their excellent reputations and success rates, were grounded because of the pandemic.
With the world still in a state of flux, a lot of those people feel they have no choice but to stay here now to do their treatment. A captive audience of sorts – never a good thing.
I would have hated to have had that decision taken out of my hands. We went abroad, first to Poland and then to Spain. After several appointments with two different clinics in Dublin, the second of which discovered I had a ‘touch of endometriosis’, I couldn’t bring myself to give them our business.
It all felt like a massive moneymaking racket, every time we sat down in front of someone, I swear I could feel our credit card starting to pulse in my purse. Assisted baby-making is really expensive. According to those who run the clinics, it’s because of the cuttingedge science involved, which requires ongoing research, and it’s all very labour-intensive.
In fairness, they are doling out miracles every day; people who would have had little to no chance of ever having children, ending up with the dream they most want fulfilled in life – a family. But in Ireland, where there is no support for those who need assisted reproductive technology (ART), it can leave some in such a desperate state that they won’t think twice about emptying bank accounts or re-mortgaging houses in their quest for a baby.
We’re the only country in Europe, apart from Lithuania, that does not provide any publicly funded fertility treatment. In the UK, depending on where you live, you’re entitled to at least one, but possibly up to five free rounds of IVF through the NHS.
At the clinic we went to in Krakow, we couldn’t get over the number of young people sitting alongside us in the waiting room. The doctor there told us there was a serious fertility issue in central Poland, because of pollution. I don’t know if that’s true.
But I do know the treatment all those young people were getting was free, and that the same doctor was utterly horrified at how much we were charged in Ireland for something he considered to be basic healthcare.
The part that infuriated him most was that here you must pay upfront for your entire round of IVF, no matter how far you get in the process. I remember him looking at us, shaking his head, asking why would people pay for procedures that may never happen?
You might get only as far as an egg retrieval – after that they’re mixed with sperm in a lab to try and create an embryo. But it’s often the case that the eggs don’t fertilise. And that’s the end of it, the treatment is over.
‘You will only pay us for what work we do,’ he told us. ‘I think anything else is not correct. I don’t understand why you accept this in Ireland.’
In Spain, where we went for a different treatment, we felt we were dealt with in a similarly fair manner. And I know that even with flights and hotels, it cost us several thousand euro less than it cost a friend who had the exact same procedure done here a couple of years later.
There are stresses and strains that go with heading abroad, and for a while most of our holidays were used up going to foreign clinics. But in much the same way that no one is still able to explain to me why I can buy a packet of paracetamol in Northern Ireland for 52p, while down here you’re talking at least a couple of euro for the exact same product, I don’t understand the discrepancy in prices.
And don’t think that you get substandard care if you go away, an accusation often levelled at dental or cosmetic surgery treatment. In fact, it’s Ireland that still has no regulatory body that oversees the fertility industry. Despite repeated calls by some of the clinics themselves, here they just come under the administration of the Health Products Regulatory Authority.
‘The industry is regulated by the HPRA but it’s more from the point of view of the quality procedures surrounding the management of human tissues and cells,’ Professor Mary Wingfield of the Merrion Fertility Clinic has said. ‘It’s not about the social, medical, ethical and legal realities.’
For a start, there needs to be more transparency, because don’t think for a second that the price listed for a round of IVF on a clinic’s website is what you’ll pay. The extra costs for different tests and procedures, some of which have been accused of being ‘add-ons’ not medically proven to improve your chances of having a baby, would make your head spin.
In 2019 it was announced that the Government was ready to start the process of introducing publicly funded infertility services, they expected IVF to be available in 2021. We know what’s happened in the meantime.
At the end of September, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly told the Dáil that the Bill on AHR is being drafted and a model of care has been developed. But it’s still months away from being finalised.
So, despite these new satellite clinics being opened, Irish people have even less choice than usual, because they’re understandably reluctant to travel. Another layer of unfairness to an already desperately unfair situation.