Ms Orla O'Connor:

I will address the questions I did not answer earlier. Again, our organisation comes to this issue representing very clearly the views of our members which have been put forward through various motions at AGMs so we have a very clear and strong mandate.

A second issue raised concerns the question of where the rights of the unborn fit in terms of this. What we are talking about in terms of the X case is where a woman's life is at risk. We are saying that this has to take precedence.

We saw that if one was legislating for the X case, it would be quite difficult to incorporate fatal foetal abnormalities. We think it is critical for it to be incorporated but we did not see how it could. Some of the legal opinions given here yesterday were interesting because it is a critical issue for our members and the women who have been through that experience.

In respect of appropriate and inappropriate lobbying, the National Women's Council of Ireland has been engaged in lobbying since our inception on a range of different women's rights issues and has always engaged in appropriate lobbying. In respect of whether we can deal with this in any other way, from the National Women's Council's perspective, that is why we came to this hearing saying that we welcomed the decision by the Government to introduce legislation and regulation because we believe that was required under the X case and the European Court of Human Rights so the answer is "No".

In respect of Senator Mullen's question regarding suicide, I have not come here as a medical expert but the Senator asked what my opinion is. From our point of view, the numbers will probably be very small but, as was clearly said by Deputy Conway on the first day of these hearings, one life is too many. Again, I would say that suicide is a requirement under the X case. There is also the wider issue of the message it sends to women with mental health problems who face crisis pregnancies and about being able to come forward and seek counselling and support services.