Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our guests and thank them for the information they made available and for making a positive contribution to the debate. I speak as a former member of the committee, as other speakers have, that dealt with this matter in the context of identifying what that committee tried to do four years ago. It was based on the absolute need to ensure that the full range of medical supports and services were available to women throughout pregnancy for whatever duration and whether it was a crisis pregnancy, an unwanted pregnancy or whatever. It was felt that by doing what was done in the manner in which it was done at the time, the service was going to be provided in the way in which the legislation intended.

I listened with interest to what was said on the need to extend the 12-week period. The previous committee looked at this and an attempt was made to provide services on average and on par with what was available in the rest of Europe. Some countries differ. Some are more advanced than Ireland and some are not. We have to look at the efficacy of the legislation that was passed. Who is not providing the service as required and dictated by the legislation at the time and as approved by the people? We must remember that we had to have at the back of our minds at all times the fact the people had the right to approve or reject it. The best we could do at the time was try to ensure the level of the legislation was sufficient to meet the requirements of women.

I strongly support the point on the absence of robust data. We need this as a matter of urgency. Deputy Bríd Smith referred to some of the recommendations that were made for which we do not seem to have evidence. For example, I do not know whether a comprehensive level of sex education is being made available in schools. I am not sure changing legislation will improve it but we need to put it in place and it needs to be done as a matter of urgency.

I am more than a little concerned about national coverage. The findings at the time, after exhaustive exchanges of views between the various stakeholders, was that national coverage in respect of women's health during pregnancy is essential if we are to address the issues concerned. If the availability of support services for women's health has changed since then we need to know urgently about the reasons. We need to have cold hard factual evidence to back up the situation. For example, we need to know how many women are forced to go abroad for terminations of pregnancies and we need to know the reasons for this. By "we", I mean legislators need to know this. The legislators have to stand over this afterwards. Whatever is done has to stand up to scrutiny and stand up to Opposition appraisal. It has the right to appraise it but it has to happen this way.

There is also need to try to ensure the level of data being made available addresses the concerns of the committee from four years ago. Points were raised at the time, all in good faith, by various people and practitioners. It was planned that some practitioners, for personal reasons, would refuse to get involved in the provision of services. I recognise that, but it does not in any way absolve us from the need and obligation to provide health services for women who are pregnant and have a right to them. I was one of the first people in the country to support the introduction of the legislation on the protection of life during pregnancy, which was groundbreaking at the time. The waiting period was kept as it was for reasons that have been referred to already. It has been acknowledged that some women seeking a discontinuation of pregnancy may change their minds. People do change their minds. It was from a health point of view that it was thought that people wanting to terminate pregnancies immediately should have a waiting period because they may think differently. This arose from some of the evidence submitted to the committee during the course of the interviews whereby some people were full of remorse afterwards. It was not the majority of people but it was some people. In order to address this issue, it was put into the legislation to ensure the highest level of care was made available to women, for or against as the case maybe.

We need to identify precisely the amount of travel abroad and the reasons for it. We need to look at the chill factor. This also applies in other countries, including the UK. Its inclusion is being criticised. The Irish legislation is pitched somewhere in the middle ground, but we need more information as to how it has progressed over the past three to four years. We need hard evidence. That evidence must involve a careful assessment of all that has happened in the past couple of years in order to ensure that in the context of whatever decisions are made, we improve matters.

We are going to change the legislation, which was not anticipated in the review. The review was supposed to identify the cause or causes of what might impede the provision of first-class healthcare and support for pregnant women throughout the country, in all circumstances, not by virtue of the fact they are far from where services are available but to try to ensure, insofar as we could, that such services be made available full stop. We have the obligation as legislators to do that for now and in the future. I do not want to delay the meeting but the issue of national coverage is one that needs to be dealt with as a matter of urgency.

The other issue is I do not think it was ever intended that women would have to justify their need for healthcare. There were reasons other than those for needing to ensure that the legislation was not as progressive as that in some countries but not as restrictive as that in others. It is essential that the highest possible level of medical care be made available, whether it involves medical abortion or surgical abortion. A lot depended on the degree to which these issues were teased out by the previous committee when the people came to vote. Legislators have to rely on public support for whatever we legislate for at any particular time and that will still continue.