Dr. Colm Henry:

No, I am talking about consultant obstetricians. As the Deputy knows, there needs to be a hospital service at between ten and 12 weeks to provide for surgical or medical termination. A named consultant presence to take referrals for women and to carry out the terminations is essential. In the four hospitals to which I referred, this has been part of our discussions regarding the new consultants that have been provided to support the service. They must start up the service once these posts are in place. My hope is that it will be provided in those hospitals this year.

In the remaining hospitals - Letterkenny, Portlaoise, Tipperary and Wexford - there are some individual issues. We have 90 maternity units and we would like each of them to have six consultants on the rota. In the case of this particular service, it is more likely that not all the consultants and other staff would be signing up to provide it. We are sometimes relying on a small number of staff or, in particular in the smaller units, just one or two individuals to carry out the service. We are working with those hospitals, which tend to be the ones that have existing staffing difficulties at consultant level in terms of getting permanent staff on board or filling vacancies. We are working with them to link new consultant posts with the service. I cannot give the Deputy the same assurance that I can give in respect of the other four hospitals in terms of the service being provided this year.