Debate contribution: Endometriosis Care

Debate contribution by Miss Órlaithí Flynn on 29 September 2025.

MLA

Miss Órlaithí Flynn

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

29 September 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Endometriosis Care

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5139503

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Go raibh maith agat, a Phríomh-Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

I will wind on the motion and, as the Minister did, thank everybody who spoke in today's debate. It has been genuine and authentic. From their remarks, you can tell that Members, across the Chamber, really care about this issue and, more broadly, about all those issues that impact on women's health. I also appreciate the Minister's response and remarks. He has already provided some important updates and improvements. Following today's debate, it will be important for Members to follow some of that detail closely, and I am sure that they will. We wish him and all the health and social care staff who will be involved in delivering that work all the best. It will be good for the Health Committee to follow up anyway, and the Chairperson is here beside me. We will follow up on progress and, hopefully, we will be able to support the Minister and all the staff in all the work that will take place in the time ahead. I was really glad to hear about that. As for the context, the importance of it and the delays, it is already clear that the issue does not affect only a few. We heard some statistics from Members who spoke. In the North, in particular, we are talking about tens of thousands of women. Across the island, we are talking about hundreds of thousands, and when you multiply that across these islands, you see that it is such a big issue that has an impact on so many women. It has almost become normalised that a woman should live with constant, severe pelvic pain, with internal scarring. We are talking about damage to multiple organs. That is what a lot of women are faced with when they live with that condition, and it does make you wonder. When Danny spoke about inherent misogyny in the health system, it sounded a bit harsh, but when you think about scarring, damaged organs, living in constant pain, and that that has been the accepted way of things for so long, you do think about inherent misogyny in the system and in how the system was designed. Gerry mentioned that in his remarks, too. It is important to reflect on that and to appreciate everything that the Minister is endeavouring to do and take forward to try to make some improvements in that area eventually.

Yes, and I thank the Member very much for his intervention. You would have thought that we had planned that, Gerry, because the next remark that I was going to make was about the example of women getting paid leave because they are living with that pain. The example of painful menstrual cycles was a point that I was coming to. A lot of women are dealing with endometriosis and living with that pain, but if it is fobbed off as just a bad period, it makes you reflect on the whole issue. A woman who does not have endometriosis might have to live with a monthly bad period, but when you are living with the additional impact, pain and pressure of having the condition on top of having a monthly menstrual cycle, it is just not fair. Yes, I would absolutely be in support of any measures that support women who are going through that. That is all women. Most women will, obviously, go through a menstrual cycle, but living with endometriosis is an additional burden. A couple of Members referenced the fact that we are talking about these issues as women's health issues. Let us think about the girls — the children. So many young girls are already battling with the condition and going through that unbearable pain. We are talking about schoolchildren who, in some circumstances, have to miss school because the pain is too much and they cannot get out of bed. Again, that brings it back to how unfair it is for a young girl to live like that, grow into a young woman and, potentially, still not have received a diagnosis or an appropriate care pathway eight, nine or 10 years later. My God. It does not bear thinking about. If you have a daughter, a younger sister, a child or another female close to you in your life, put yourself in their position. I know that people get this, and that is why a lot of work is being done on it. Hopefully, we are making a bit of progress. One of the women who was living with the pain said that it was so severe that labour pains were easier than endometriosis pain. Any women who are watching this who have gone through labour and contractions will know the pain of that process. I have been through labour — thankfully, I do not have endometriosis — and, as a woman, I cannot imagine how any woman can live with that level of pain on a daily basis. I mean that. Some of the women whom we heard directly from were spoken about. Linda and Sinéad mentioned the fact that the APG on women's health held a round-table discussion back in March, I think that it was, which was Endometriosis Awareness Month. The Minister kindly sent some of his senior officials who have been heavily involved in the work on this. They genuinely listened to the speakers that day. Olivia, Cara and Anne have been mentioned. It was a brilliant event. We gave the floor over to the women there who had lived experience. I took something that Sinéad said away with me that day. I do not know whether she mentioned it during or after the meeting, but she spoke about it in her speech today, so I am sure that she will not mind me referencing it. When I left that event, it stuck with me that Sinéad had said that she had lived experience of this 20-plus, or maybe close to 30 years, ago. You could see that she got really frustrated that day because, as she said, nothing had changed since that time. She said, "I am listening to the same conversations and to women sharing the same stories — they are the same horror stories — and nothing has changed". I could sense the genuine frustration of a woman who has lived this and who felt that frustration that day listening to younger and older women. It stuck with me that there has not been a change in that number of years. That is not to put that burden on our Health Minister, however, who is with us today. He has not held the post for the past 20 years. It is about focusing on how we move dealing with the matter on and how we can try to make women's life better. The Minister mentioned some of the pilot and the gynae robot, and a lot of that sounded really exciting and positive. We need to shift our focus to asking, "How do we move this on? How do we get more women seen to in a timely manner, and how do we try to make their life better so that they are not living in terrible pain on a daily basis?". Another element of the motion is cross-border cooperation. I take on board the Minister's points about how we would assess need, viability and the positive outcomes of any all-island approach, if required, but I am pleased that he is open to maybe exploring the benefits of that. We can do a wee bit of work on that in the time ahead. Finally, I am really happy to support the Alliance amendment, which emphasises the importance of the overall women's health action plan, which is where we need to get to.

1,298 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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