John Crown (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome my colleagues and thank them for their particularly learned, focused and well-informed presentations.

My first question is for Dr. Kevin Walsh. One of the issues which has exercised the committee in recent days relates to the quantification of risk, namely, the percentage chance an individual has of dying. It is clear that this becomes very nebulous and contentious in the area of the highly hypothetical and probably-never-going-to-happen psychiatric indication. In various medical conditions, however, it is a very real concern. I refer to blood pressure complications, congenital heart problems etc. I am guessing that the answer to my question is "Yes" but perhaps Dr. Kevin Walsh could provide some reassurance. If someone comes to him with a particular congenital heart lesion which has caused a certain level of left ventricular dysfunction, valvular regurgitation or whatever, does he have available to him reasonably good guidelines which indicate what is the incremental risk of death to the woman in question if she carries her pregnancy to full term as opposed to her not doing so? At what level would he consider that the threshold is such that he would strongly urge that the risk to her life is so great that she really should have a termination?

My second question is for my colleague and very dear friend, Dr. Janice Walshe. Obviously, she and I work very closely in respect of cases of this nature and she has given the committee a really good insight into the various dilemmas relating to the life of the mother, the risk of foetal malformation etc. She is correct, we have worked out ways of trying to get the balance right.

While we may not have cases where we send people for termination of their pregnancy, would the delegation hold that it is fair to say that sometimes we end up making compromises in what would be the absolute standard care for an individual person if she was not pregnant to accommodate the special needs of the developing foetus?