Mr. Muiris O'Connor:

I thank the Deputy. She has summarised the reason for the legislation superbly well and we also are highly conscious, with the service being in its infancy, of the chilling effect. The actual protests cause harm and distress but we think fear of protests is constraining the roll-out.

We are conscious of the incompleteness of the roll-out of services but encouraged by the trajectories. Eleven of the 19 maternity hospitals are currently providing this service and we think there will be two or three more within a year or so. Likewise, the 413 GPs mentioned are only one eighth of the total number of GPs in the country. Again, the review by Marie O'Shea will look at geographical dispersion but, without breaching confidentiality, just to reassure us and see what we can do to support the services.

On industrial action, the Department took a view that protests by staff and the trade union or other related industrial action is not within the scope of prohibited conduct under the proposed legislation. We feel that it is unlikely that such activities would fall within the scope of head 4(2) as such activity is not intended or could not reasonably have the effect of influencing a person's decision to access termination of pregnancy, to interfere with a person's access or the provision of a termination of pregnancy service. I can very clear state that it is absolutely not the policy intent to prohibit industrial action within the safe access zones. We are continuing to engage with the Office of the Attorney General.