Dr. Janice Walshe:

I will take that question. The answer is "No", they have not been denied. We know that terminations have taken place on the St. Vincent's campus. If the committee would indulge me for a moment, I will outline how this would generally happen. Let us say that a patient comes to me and is diagnosed with cancer during her pregnancy. I will then lift the phone to the obstetrician who has a specific interest in that and gain information as to where the procedure will be performed. The registration of terminations of pregnancy is completed centrally for patient confidentiality reasons and we know that the vast majority of those terminations are completed before 12 weeks' gestation. In terms of where the termination will take place, that is very much guided by the consultant obstetrician. The more complex terminations will take place in our hospital because they require the multidisciplinary involvement of different physicians. To answer the Deputy's question, there has never been any interference in that regard since that legal framework was available to us to allow us to complete those procedures, as is entirely appropriate for a very vulnerable patient population.