Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Other measures include enhanced dating and anomaly scanning services in addition to that provided through the 2018 HSE service plan; additional endocrinologists, specialist nurses and midwives in diabetes and dieticians to help prevent obesity, which is a preventable cause of maternal illness in pregnancy; the roll-out of the electronic health record for mothers and babies to all maternity hospitals and units as a priority; and the extension to the community as early as possible; extra support for the implementation of the national standards for bereavement care following pregnancy loss and perinatal death to complete the bereavement teams right across our maternity services and to provide further social workers and psychologists to help bereaved families. The measures also include extra capacity in the perinatal hospice care service to provide in-reach services and to ensure that palliative care services are available in line with the joint committee's recommendation. The Government has agreed that all the initiatives I have outlined with regard to ancillary recommendations to enhance services for pregnant women and reduce the number of crisis pregnancies will be funded from 2019 and this provides me with the time to prepare the ground for their implementation right across our health service.

I want to be very clear that these initiatives can and will be implemented regardless of the outcome of the referendum. They are the right things to do and it shows a holistic and comprehensive response by Government and the Oireachtas to the well-being, health and safety of women and their babies. When people say our attention should be on reducing crisis pregnancies, that is what we are doing. When they say our attention should be on providing better support and counselling services to women who go full term and then lose their baby shortly after birth, that is what we are doing here. We are providing perinatal hospice care, more counselling, more medical experts to work with our women, more contraception and safer sex campaigns. This will help reduce the number of crisis pregnancies and I hope will have a very positive impact on our maternity services.

As a country, we have travelled a long way on the issue. As a State, it is high time for us to take action to protect women and to look after their needs with care, consideration and compassion and to recognise the realities. Whether the eighth amendment stays or goes, termination is a reality for Irish women.