Dr. Sam Coulter Smith:

I echo all the comments Dr. Mahony has made. If we introduce legislation which allows termination of pregnancy in this country what would be the impact on our services? I do not think we know the answer to that question. I agree that risk of death from suicide is extraordinarily rare. However, we do not know the number of people who go from Ireland to the UK seeking termination of pregnancy in that jurisdiction and we do not know what numbers might then come to us and not go to the UK. So we do not know the answer to that. There are people who will seek termination of pregnancy because of rape or incest, or because they have babies with lethal congenital abnormalities. Some of those women will come to us and say they have significant mental health issues. Those women will then need to be assessed by the psychiatric services and the obstetrics services in this country. That is not a function we are actually doing at the moment, so I think there will be an impact, but we do not know how big or small it will be.

In terms of conscientious objection, I cannot think of any circumstances in which any health professional where a mother's life is imminently at risk would refuse to be involved in her care. I cannot see that that would be an issue if the mother's life is genuinely at risk. The legislation needs to have flexibility to allow the medical profession to make appropriate decisions. We need to trust our medical practitioners to make the appropriate decisions. I think the regulation that is put in place has to ensure that there are an appropriate number of suitably qualified doctors who make the decisions and they need to be protected by legislation.

Is termination of pregnancy ever necessary?

I would say "Yes". In our hospital last year, we had six situations where I can absolutely tell the committee for sure that if intervention had not been made, that mother, if she had not died very soon after the event, would have died subsequently. I would say "Yes". Those situations do happen and, in our hospital, they happened six times in the last year.

If I have not answered all of the questions, the members can come back to me.