Professor Siobhán Mullally:

I thank Deputy Daly for the questions. First, with regard to our international legal obligations and the status of international law, which is the core of the question, when Ireland ratifies an international treaty it accepts a legal obligation in good faith to implement that treaty, so it is a sovereign decision taken by the State to ratify a treaty and thereby to comply with it and give effect to it. That is part of international treaty law. We have a good faith obligation - that is the terminology used - to give effect to our obligations under international treaties and to ensure effective remedies in any case of a violation of those treaties.

With regard to the decisions of a UN human rights treaty body, as in Mellet or Whelan, those are authoritative interpretations of the bodies that are competent as a matter of law under the relevant treaty, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to interpret those. Not only have we ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but we have also recognised the competence of treaty bodies to receive and consider decisions and to give their views on these. That was an additional step we took in ratifying the first optional protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. As a State, we have accepted those obligations as a matter of law.

The second question was with regard to uncertainty. As was also said last week, while it is not possible, as a matter of law, to achieve absolute certainty with any legal text, the protections that are afforded should ensure that a woman has effective access to a lawful abortion, that timely decisions are made and that procedures are accessible. That was precisely the problem in the A, B and C case with regard to the third applicant, C, where there was a finding of a violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights where, the court found, there had been no access to an abortion that was lawful. This has also come up in the cases before the European Court of Human Rights in regard to Poland. Again, there was such a lack of clarity that women and girls had been subject to humiliating situations, and moved around from one place to another, because of the absence of timely and effective access to lawful abortions. That level of uncertainty has been referred to as a chilling factor both for medical practitioners and for women and girls with regard to their lawful rights to abortion.

On the third question in regard to criminalisation and decriminalisation, we referred in the policy document and also in our statement specifically to the views of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2016, where it called for decriminalisation in all circumstances. Again, this goes directly to the point around access to a safe and legal abortion being part of the right to the highest attainable standard of health and the need to ensure that the criminal law does not act as barrier to access to health services.

The final question was in regard to conscientious objection and religious freedom. In the extended policy document and in the submission we had made earlier to the Citizens' Assembly, we referred to the relevant provisions of international European human rights law and, with regard to the Polish decisions from the European Court of Human Rights, to the collective complaint from the European social rights committee on how health care services are organised. While there must be recognition of the right to conscientious objection, health services must be organised in such a way that there is effective access so that a health service provider, a medical practitioner, must ensure onward referral to a non-objecting practitioner, and any right to conscientious objection, of course, should not impede the right to life of a woman and to their lawful rights under an abortion regime. Therefore, there is an obligation of onward referral. Reference has also been made in the Polish context to decisions being given in writing to be justified to a greater level of transparency and clarity to avoid that kind of confusion and uncertainty for any woman or girl seeking access to a lawful abortion.