Michelle Mulherin (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There is no doubt that a medical person must make the assessment of best practice. The fact that the Minister is not willing to refer to best medical practice in the Bill is not very comforting. I do not know what to think of the Minister's description of clinical research in this area. This whole conversation is not much comfort, as we are trying to make sure this is a restrictive regime, but the Medical Council in its guidelines is saying that the assessment by psychiatrists should be based on clinical research. I refer to the many people who have a problem with the suicide ground. I would be quite happy if every practitioner who is a professional psychiatrist accepted that at a certain point a woman would actually require a termination. We are told it is one in 50 years, one in half a million pregnancies, but there is no clinical research data to support it. We are told it is because it is so rare-----