Alex White (Dublin South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Nobody can make the case that the circumstance, where there is a real and substantial risk to the life of the woman arising from a risk of suicide, would never arise. Nobody can bring that argument home. Whether it is one in 1 million or whatever figure Deputy Mulherin had, I do not know what the likely outturn would be but nobody in this room or elsewhere can say it would never arise that a woman's life would not be at risk from the risk of suicide. That case cannot be sustained and that is why we are providing for it.

To answer Deputy Shortall's question on what protection is there, I say in all sincerity - I know it is repetitive - the protection is in the Bill. The test is an extremely onerous one. The protection for doctors acting in good faith carrying out the components of the test, which appear in the Bill, are the protections a doctor has as well as the additional protection all doctors have in regard to the general principles that apply to circumstances where there might be litigation or where their actions might be attacked afterwards. There is protection there. How else could we do this? I genuinely ask Deputy Shortall and others, if they can suggest another way this can be done?

I respectfully say to Deputy Creed that I have a number of objections to the notion of having a medical advocate but the principal one is that it actually becomes circular. If one puts an advocate into the clinical situation who is speaking up for the unborn, as Deputy Creed reasonably suggested he or she might do, it cannot change the balance of the test which must be applied, which is whether there is a real and substantial risk. There is an added test in section 9 where we require two psychiatrists rather than one psychiatrist. We have the added safeguards. What would the advocate do? Would the advocate question whether in truth there really was a real and substantial risk as found by the other two? That is adding a third and is an argument for having four rather than three. One would have to define what the advocate would do.

I understand Deputy Creed said a medical advocate but it has been argued in the debate that it should be some form of legal intervention, to which I would be wholly opposed. I would not be in favour of a forensic cross-examination of a woman as to her bona fides. That is precisely what Mr. Barnes meant in his article in The Irish Times. He might not have spelled out exactly what he meant but that is the only thing he could have meant. The question of having an advocate, or having somebody to speak up for the unborn, must mean a forensic cross-examination of the woman concerned and I do not believe that could be countenanced. That adds an extra layer and is not contemplated.

The point about ethical dilemmas is addressed indirectly in the sense that the ethical dilemma doctors might have is resolved in this Bill in the provision in regard to conscientious objection. Doctors apply the test and if a doctor has a conscientious objection to being involved in that process, he or she has an out.