Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I do not mean to be evasive but I want to be careful that I do not prejudge the work. We are about to hire an independent chair to provide us with the answer to that exact question. I have my views, obviously, that I am happy to share with the committee, if members would like, but I want to be very careful not to prejudge the piece of work we will be doing. I can certainly share some of the facts and figures we have been going through, and I might ask Ms Luddy to come in on this.

We have seen a significant reduction in the number of women travelling to the UK. For those of us who were involved in the advocacy and the Bill, one of the big questions we had was whether this would move provision of service from being mainly in the UK to mainly in Ireland. The number of women travelling versus the number of terminations provided here suggest that the objective has largely been achieved. However, there are still a number of women who are travelling and that, for example, would be one of the matters that would be covered in this review. Why are they travelling? Why do they feel the need to travel? Is the legislation operating as well as it should? Questions will be raised around the geographic coverage because it is the case that not all maternity hospitals are providing the service. A relatively small percentage of GPs are providing the service and I know there are geographic difficulties, for example.

I will get into any detail the Deputy would like, but without trying to prejudge it. In aggregate, on the main objectives we were trying to achieve, we can certainly point to a huge reduction in the number of women leaving the country. That objective, to a greater or lesser extent, has been achieved. Have we achieved broad geographic coverage?