Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the guests and thank them for their offerings and wise words.

Some witnesses who appeared before the committee on previous days referred to the C case, which dates from 1996 or 1997 and which involved a young girl who was taken into care by the authorities and was brought to Britain for an abortion, allegedly because she was suicidal. Is Dr. Ó Domhnaill in possession of any information he could supply to the committee in respect of the possible implications of that case? I thank him very much providing information on his experience regarding a girl forced to travel from Jersey to Southampton to have an abortion and the extremely harrowing problems with which she has been obliged to deal in the 22 years since it was carried out.

I also wish to thank Ms O'Brien - as a woman, a mother and a teacher - for her very pertinent words in respect of suicide. I am of the view that she was correct to state that there has been something of an effort to normalise suicide. I thank her for what she said because we are close to having an epidemic of suicide in this country at present.