Mr. Niall Behan:

In response to Deputy Ó Caoláin with regard to our two clients who attempted suicide, thankfully they were unsuccessful in their attempts. These two cases happened within the past three years and that is as far back as we looked. One of the clients specifically mentioned a particular barrier to being able to travel to the UK for an abortion as one of the reasons she attempted suicide.

With regard to accessing psychiatric services, abortion services and mental health services are still very much stigmatised in Ireland and many of our clients express strong views on this. They speak about the personal and social implications of accessing abortion services and psychiatric services. It is our experience that women who are not involved in psychiatric services who want to travel for a termination to the UK will travel in preference to being stigmatised, as they would see it, with a mental health illness.

With regard to Senator Crown's question, the IFPA has in place a range of stringent policies and procedures for our services and if a specific complaint is made to us which is apparent and viable we can deal with it. We have been in contested areas of public discourse and have provided services for the past 40 years so it has always been like this for our organisation and we must have these policies and procedures in place.