Dr. Catherine Conlon:

At no time during my contributions to the committee did I ever intend to suggest that any Member of the Dáil had any lack of intellectual competency to consider this issue. In fact, in the participative democracy process that Ireland undertook in terms of the constitutional review process during the citizens’ assembly, we had an incredible model of participative democracy around reform of the abortion legislation. The citizens’ assembly, followed by the parliamentary report, was an exemplary process of reform. I am very proud as an Irish person that that is the approach we took, and I think the Oireachtas did us proud on that.

In referring to the statements people would have made prior to the referendum about the sense of feeling pressurised to follow through with an abortion, I did research, funded by the Department of Health the HSE, with people from Ireland who had travelled to Britain for abortions on two occasions in the 1990s and 2005. One of the things that was clear was that given the actual commitment of having to travel to Britain and to be in that clinic, your capacity to feel that you could opt out of pursuing that decision was much more difficult than if you attend an Irish GP local to your home, have a conversation with the GP about your possible options, know that you can come back at least once, if not more, and continue a discussion with them supported by a funded counselling service, which we also have under the Irish system.

That makes for a very accessible abortion service. Our statistics internationally show that a holistic, accessible abortion service reduces the rate of abortions because people are able to be fully informed, they know that the service is available and accessible to them but they also know that they have other supports available to them. The legislation-----