Ms Leah Hoctor:

It is true that it is a stark picture. Ireland has a number of interesting peers in Europe that have changed their abortion laws and moved from an orange situation or even a red situation to now becoming green. These would be Switzerland, Portugal and Spain. In Switzerland and Portugal, those processes involved a public referendum. I live in Switzerland and I am aware that they vote on everything there - they vote on what side of the road they will drive on. They liberalised, or changed and reformed, their abortion law through a public referendum process. There would have been a legislative proposal put forward to the people of Switzerland by the legislature in 2002.

Spain and Portugal are the most recent. They legalised in 2010 and 2008, respectively. In Portugal, there was a public referendum. It may be also of interest to the committee to look at that process. Then Spain also moved from a restrictive model, from being orange on the map, to now being green. Those are the most recent.