Ms Alison Spillane:

I will make two additional points. The first relates to the supports for women in those circumstances. Since before the introduction of legal abortion and currently, the HSE does fund organisations such as the IFPA to provide specialist pregnancy counselling. It is through that specialist counselling that we hear about many of the barriers women face. Counselling can be useful for women to work through the particular stresses and anxieties of the unintended pregnancy but also of the delays involved and having to go through the waiting period. It can help women to deal with the stress of being excluded by the law or of finding the gestation limit has excluded them from care completely. Many women are not aware of the availability of pregnancy counselling. Among the clients of our pregnancy counselling service are minors who need to access abortion care, women in direct provision and students. Our clients include people who lack PPS numbers. To clarify, the IFPA provides care to people without PPS numbers. That is currently a cost we absorb. That is not sustainable into the long term and there needs to be a system whereby there is a clear mechanism and transparency about reimbursement in order that providers are in a position to offer care and are not put in the position of denying it because of the reimbursement issue and a lack of clarity.