Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Okay, I appreciate that is the angle. From how this process has been talked about from the beginning, many people felt that it was going to go beyond the operational. I appreciate that the Minister is coming at it as a start point and that it may evolve from that, but I believe that many people were under the impression that it would include policy. I wanted to put that forward. I accept that the Minister has his starting point and that is fine.

I have a question about the consultation. The Minister said the closing date will be 1 April. What measures will the Department of Health take to ensure the consultation is fully accessible to enable all stakeholders to engage and contribute? I refer to migrant women, Traveller women and disabled people. The Minister says there will be advertisements and the like, but will a vigorous and strategic approach be taken? Not everybody has access and not everybody will be able to engage in the public consultation per se. Perhaps the Minister will speak a little on that.

I will fly through the questions so the Minister can answer them rather than go back and forth. The Minister said he had to go through the public tender for the chair. When did he realise the sums of money that were going to be involved? It seems a little mad that this amount of money is being spent but the chair will not be in situfrom the beginning. It seems as if this is not a process that is going to be led by an independent chair. It appears that it will be more a Department of Health-led process, which is the Minister's prerogative, with the chair being brought in at a later date. The Minister mentioned that the chair could change or review the terms of reference. This seems to be a slightly topsy-turvy way to do things, and I appreciate that this is not how the Minister wanted to do things. However, this process has been known about, discussed and planned for over a year, so at what point did the Minister realise that it was going to have to go to public tender? How close to today did he figure that out?

I refer to the advisory group. Many people and groups have called for an advisory group. To follow up on Deputy Bríd Smith's point, access to expertise is very different from access to an expert advisory panel. I reiterate that point. A great deal of pressure is being put on someone so I believe that having that expert advisory panel would be very worthwhile.

There are two brief final points. How did the terms of reference come about? For example, the Abortion Rights Campaign and Lawyers for Choice put together suggested terms of reference based on legal international best practice. How did the Minister arrive at his terms of reference? It is very important that the terms of reference allow for an open and transparent process because we want our legislation to be in line with international best practice and best practice for pregnant women who will need to use abortion services.

On my final point, the Minister continually refers to peer-reviewed research. It is worth noting that many voluntary organisations such as the National Women's Council and the Abortion Rights Campaign would not have the same access to peer review panels as academic researchers would. Similarly, the WHO report is very rigorous but it has not gone through academic peer review yet. While I am all for academic vigour and peer review, many experts who work in this area in Ireland will not have access to that. Groups such as the Irish Family Planning Association, IFPA, and Well Woman Centre have done a huge amount of research and it would be great if that research was not excluded because it does not come through an academic lens.