Ms Marie O'Shea:

The evidence from Dr. Duffy's work and from the work I conducted with service providers is that the criminal sanction of providers weighs heavily on their minds. In the context of the Act, it is interconnected with the operation of sections 9 and 10, which provide for termination care where “there is a risk to the life, or of serious harm to the health, of the pregnant woman”, and to the operation of section 11, which relates to trying to determine whether the foetus will demise before birth or within 28 days after birth. Because medical science is not exact, it is an educated guess. There is no definitive list of conditions that will say something will lead to death within 28 days, so a lot of it is educated guesswork.

In the case of section 9, which some of the Deputy's colleagues raised in written questions, there is a degree of confusion about its operation, which arises from its wording. When we put that together with cases that went wrong and the media scrutiny that surrounded those cases, I am told universally by medical practitioners that the impact of a criminal sanction hanging over them has a chilling effect, and that was the term used by almost all of them. It was one of the main provisions they wanted to be removed from the Act.