Dr. Clíona Murphy:

I thank Deputy Donnelly for the question. What he is asking about moves us on from clinical guidelines to integration and implementation. It is a continuum. We may well struggle to complete guidelines by January because most clinical guidelines can take longer than that. Implementation is a much larger process and, as Dr. Boylan said, up to now much work has been done in silos. Many stakeholders and I feel we would be better off sitting down together and contributing on the implementation process. From speaking to clinicians on the ground, different hospitals may have different capacity constraints. In particular, we are trying to anticipate what surgical capacity will be required in hospitals.

The narrative in the media up to now has been about the provision of services for the medical termination of pregnancy. A large proportion, however, certainly between nine and 12 weeks, may well be surgical. People may choose to have a surgical termination and there are also family reasons why they might do so, such as if they had children at home or workplace issues, etc. We need, therefore, to anticipate the provision of services in our hospitals. There is good evidence that provision of surgical terminations needs to be integrated into women's healthcare in hospitals. We are not looking for separate buildings or separate capacity but we have to be creative in looking at our current deficits.