Ms Orla O'Connor:

I thank the committee members for their questions. To start with Senator Healy Eames's questions, I suppose the first thing to say - I said this at the start of my presentation - is that I come here from the National Women's Council which, as 160 member organisations, represents thousands of women. In fact, as Senator Bacik stated, others in the room are also part of the women's council as members of the women's groups of political parties, which are members of the National Women's Council. What I started off to say, because it is really important, is that this issue of abortion has been discussed for over 30 years in the National Women's Council and there have been motions that really reflected the different perspectives and the difficult experiences around abortion. Coming here today to talk about this, I feel there is a very strong mandate from women and from women's organisations, and it is backed up by the opinion polls. That is important to say.

The issue of suicide came up. My key response to that - Ms Smyth also said it in reference to Action on X - is to ask in what other area of policy do we decide to ditch Supreme Court rulings because we do not like them. That is what Attorney General v. X and others was about. It allowed for suicide, and the committee members, as legislators, have to go forward with that.

Some of the other wider questions also related to suicide. There has been clear testimony from the medical professionals at these hearings, similar to what we have been saying, about why it is important to decriminalise certain types of termination and why it is important to include suicide, and we concur with this.