Dr. Caitriona Henchion:

I will comment first on the scanning issue. Overall, it is one of those issues that depends on geography. Where you are in the country depends on what way your scans are going to be provided, as well as who is going to provide them. In some parts of the country, the maternity unit will provide scans and the doctor will contact them. In Dublin and some other parts of the country, it is outsourced to a private company. The contract that company has is supposed to be that it will provide those scans within that three-day waiting time. It is not supposed to impose an additional delay. Whereas that might work a lot of the time, there will be delays some of the time. Everywhere has had staffing issues because of the pandemic, so that may be part of it. It is not something I could say was either clearly discriminatory or against accessibility or allowing access to abortion. It is set up specifically to allow access to abortion. We have a dedicated referral pathway into this company, which is separate from the general pathway in order to get timely appointments. However, it happens sometimes that there are delays. That can be delay of maybe up to a week. That can negatively impact on women in this time-sensitive service. There are occasionally delays and that is definitely true. It is difficult but we are not given any information as to what the cause the delay is. It can be a difficult experience for women when that happens. In some cases, if we were to go along with that and wait for the scan, it could potentially put women over the legal limit. In the cases where you would be concerned, you might then contact your local hospital.

Like many issues in relation to the operation of this service, it puts an undue amount of pressure on providers to go way above and beyond what they would normally be expected to do in order to try to make sure the service works for women. There could be several calls in a day about one person, which might not based on medical need. They might not be because that person is really sick but, rather, they are based on the law and on the fact that if you do not get on to somebody today, that person is going to miss a deadline. That is taking up time that should not be needed to be taken up.

Similarly, the administrative burden falls completely on the providers, who have to do additional certification documents and notification documents. Nobody would mind doing those things, if they were going to provide good data. However, the only data they seem to be interested in finding is the Irish Medical Council number of the doctor who is doing the providing. There is no useful information about the demographic of women who are attending for abortion on the notification forms. I hope that answers the Deputy’s questions on scanning.

I have talked about the chilling effect of the criminal sanctions enough at this stage, so I might pass over.