Dr. Simon Mills:

To be fair, Chairman, I think I was more than a bit sarcastic but I am happy to concur with the rules of this House and if anything I said was interpreted as sarcasm or rudeness, I apologise if any offence was caused to anybody listening to those remarks.

It occurs to me also that there is one question I did not answer and I do not want to be accused of having ducked or not answered any questions. It was a question put to me by Deputy Naughten who asked if I had ever seen a suicidal pregnant woman when I worked as a general practitioner. The answer to that question is "Yes". I recall seeing women who were pregnant and suicidal but the question of whether they were suicidal within the meaning of the X case was not a matter for my clinical judgment and therefore I cannot answer the question with any more precision other than to say that I did attend at various times depressed and suicidal pregnant women during my time as a general practitioner.

It is worth the committee observing that Ms Schweppe, Ms Staunton and I have worked entirely independently on these matters save for the fact that I took the liberty, because I had her e-mail address, of furnishing Ms Schweppe with a copy of the draft Bill yesterday. I had no idea what she intended to say. I had no idea what Ms Staunton intended to say. They had no idea what I intended to say and they had no idea what would be the contents of the Bill. It is interesting and informative that there is a coherence and a coalescence of our views and that as a matter of fact the Bill I have presented for the committee articulates the vast majority of the views that have been so cogently expressed by Ms Schweppe and Ms Staunton. That is something the committee should have some account to when considering the evidence its members have heard today. It is an interesting coalescence of views.

I will make last one comment on the Bill I have commended to the committee as the basis for the starting point of talking about this issue more and about the form the final Bill will take, and I say it in the light of what I heard said yesterday. The Bill I presented to the committee deals with a number of issues that were raised. It deals with clarity, which was called for by Dr. O'Mahony from the National Maternity Hospital. It deals with the requirement for specialist doctors, which was called for by Professor Kieran Murphy of the Irish Medical Council. It deals with the question of conscientious objection, which was called for by Dr. Mary McCaffrey. It deals with the fear of floodgates, which was warned against by Professor Patricia Casey yesterday. It deals with the question of abortion on demand by precluding it in so far as that appears to me to be possible in the drafting of the Bill.

It deals with late-term pregnancies, an issued raised by Deputy Flanagan yesterday in his questions. It ensures, by protecting doctors acting in good faith, that doctors will not go to jail. The Bill does not quantify risk in accordance with the X case and the call for clinical judgment to be allowed. In respect of all of these circumstances and without having known what the doctors were going to say yesterday, I believe we have a starting point.