To ask the Minister of Health, following his announcement that publicly funded IVF treatment will increase to one full cycle for eligible women, to provide the rationale for the decision that, to be eligible, a woman has to be on the waiting list on or after 1 October 2022.

I established a clinically led Project Board to deliver on the New Decade New Approach commitment to provide three funded cycles of IVF. The Board considered a number of retrospective dates for the increase to one full cycle for eligible women, including back to January 2020 when the NDNA commitment was announced. However, as the passage of time has meant that many of the original options are no longer feasible, following extensive discussion, the Project Board agreed that offering the additional treatment to women who were placed on the waiting list for treatment on or after 1 October 2022 allowed the ability of the service to deliver additional treatment, within current funding and physical capacity, without the complexity that setting an earlier date could cause, including increasing the waiting lists that the Regional Fertility Centre had worked hard to reduce following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Whilst I would support further expansion of the service, it will require recurrent funding assurances, which have not been provided at this time. In addition, the Regional Fertility Centre will need to increase its physical footprint and ensure the appropriate number of specialist staff are available to deliver any further increase in provision.