Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I have a few questions, the first of which relates to the timeline involved. There is much anxiety that the timeline for the review is poor because the Act states a review shall take place within three years. Therefore, on 1 January 2022 we should have been looking at the review of it. Given that will not be taken place for some time, starting with the process today, advertising for the chair and publishing the terms of reference, the Minister has said it could be April before the chair is appointed and it could be the summer or the autumn before the results of phase 1 are collated and known to us. We need clarity on the timeline. It is all right for us as politicians to sit wondering about these things but in the meantime many anxious women are waiting for changes, support and recognition of the difficulties they face, and the same applies to service providers. To say the least, this is very sloppy but the timeline is very worrying. Perhaps the Minister or Ms Luddy could come back to us with a definite parameter of when we will have publication of the review of the Health (Regulation of the Termination of Pregnancy) Act, the finished product. We should not say it could be the summer or the autumn because then we are saying it could be June or October, given that, technically, October is in the autumn.

That is way too long for people to have to wait.

I wish to return to the issue of the appointment of the chairperson. It bothers me that there is a need to e-tender because of the costs involved. For people on the receiving end of the restrictions of this legislation, the human experience and the medical experience and how those can be improved are what really matter. The Minister stated that the costs involved could be up to €100,000. I cannot figure out how he has reached that conclusion or decided that those are the criteria on which he has to tender out. I am very worried that his desire to appoint a chairperson has been interfered with on the basis of the costs. How are those costs configured or how do they arise as an issue?

An issue I have been asked to raise by all of the groups is that of the appointment an expert panel. Deputy Shortall touched on this issue. Would it not have made the whole thing more manageable if the Minister appointed a chairperson and an expert panel with all the necessary expertise on reproductive rights, human rights and the provision of services so that there are experts feeding in to the chairperson rather than the chairperson having to be an amazing person who is an expert on all of these areas? Could that decision be revisited? By revisiting it, we would have a better and broader review of the legislation and its operation and we would also have a fairer process in terms of knowing that what is coming out of it will be genuinely dealt with. To appoint only one person to deal with this is quite cumbersome and it confers on that person a significant number of powers and rights over and above what would be the case if there were to be a group of experts. It has not yet been mentioned, but the WHO guidelines were part of what we considered in the lead-up to the legislation. The WHO guidelines and the international experience have to be taken into consideration, so that is another talent this one expert chairperson will need to have, as well as medical, legal and other expertise.

The question of who could be appointed is very open to interpretation. The explanation given by the Minister in respect of why his choices in the context of appointing a chairperson were prevented from being implemented is a bit weak. I ask him to go over that again, please.