Ms Mary O'Toole:

I will address first the question Deputy McGrath put to me on a woman's right to bodily integrity as a right to abortion. I do not think I said that. At the moment, the right to an abortion in Ireland is predicated on the life of the pregnant woman being subject to substantive risk or threat. If one removes that, the pregnant woman would still have a right to life in general terms, as all citizens do, albeit it is not an absolute one. She would also, as all citizens do, have a right to bodily integrity. A right to bodily integrity is usually associated with a right to the preservation of one's health so that if one was in a position where a pregnancy was causing a difficulty with or a threat to one's health, one could conceivably bring an application before the court to say that one was entitled to an abortion because of whatever health difficulty was concerned. That is all I meant to convey by mentioning the right to bodily integrity.