Kate O'Connell (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

If I can finish, probably the most important thing the witnesses said here today is that it is a decision between a woman and her doctor. It will never become part of this committee's work unless we have a few obstetricians among us of whom I am unaware. The diagnosis of a fatal foetal abnormality is a complex procedure. From the witnesses' evidence today, it could involve a multiple of factors coming together. All of that can be helped by proper scanning as well as the maternal blood tests that are now available at eight weeks. We have heard in the Joint Committee on Health that some people may regard that as giving people options to perfect the child. However, what we have learned is that it gives the doctors dealing with the child all the necessary information to make the interventions that they need to make. I assume both witnesses entered medicine to save lives and that they specialised in obstetrics because they like handing people live babies. I thank them both for the work they do under very challenging circumstances.