Ms Mary O'Toole:

Three minutes is perfect. First, in fairness to the court system, the court tends to pull out all the stops and these cases tend to be heard very quickly. I do not think that can be laid at the door of the courts system. Once the case comes to the court's attention and the nature of the issues is identified, generally everything is done very quickly.

On women in the asylum system, for instance in the D. v. Ireland case, the State cited a Ukrainian asylum seeker who was able to get legal representation, access a court, go to a judge over the weekend and have a full hearing by the following Monday and had a decision on Monday evening. There are some instances where asylum seekers are able to access services quickly. Then if one looks at the Y case, it only came to the court's attention because the HSE made an application in relation to a woman who was at that time detained in a mental hospital who was pregnant and they wanted to be able to sedate and hydrate her because she was effectively going to be delivered of her child in circumstances where, I think it was August then, and she had been seeking an abortion since the previous April. It seemed to fall between all the cracks and she was not able to travel because she was unable to get a document, she was unable to fund the procedure and she because extremely depressed and suicidal. If one looks at the HSE report of the timeline for the Y case, it would appear that she was subsequently delivered of the child by caesarian section in hospital because that was the only way of vindicating her right to life at that time because she was suicidal and was refusing food and fluid. She did not come before the court on the question of the right to travel or on suicidal grounds, arguing that her rights needed to be vindicated in a particular way, she came before the court because the HSE wanted to hydrate her because she was not eating or drinking.