Dr. Kevin Walsh:

To answer Senator Walsh's questions, maternal outcomes are excellent but there is a problem with isolated maternity hospitals in Dublin. This is why, in terms of the location element of the heads of the Bill, termination procedures would have to be also in large adult teaching hospitals as well if we were really to address the lives of women. There is where critically ill women have to go. Equally, the fact that we still do not have a plan to have maternity hospitals and adult hospitals located right beside each other on the same campus continues to be a big concern. It was part of the problem regarding the children's hospital. With regard to whether allowing terminations would broaden the use of terminations, in terms of women with severe heart disease who have travelled to the UK to have a termination, they may be able to have it done in Ireland rather than England, and that is important because these women go abroad with major difficulties - financial, psychological and all those problems - so dealing with the problem ourselves has to be better.