Ms Noeline Blackwell:

I will pick up on that particular point. The way we collected the evidence that we are presenting here today was by going around to all of our therapists, some of whom have much experience working with us. They work with the approximately 500 clients we see in the year and on the phone lines. I set out five scenarios on page 4 of my longer paper to try to identify what they hear from the people who come into us about how they feel about being pregnant as a result of rape. There is the issue of the crisis of the rape and the crisis of the pregnancy for the person who is pregnant and is unsure of what to do and she is working through a whole set of scenarios, including practical, financial and emotional difficulties, as we put it here. I think the legal difficulties or criminality of the abortion are not the issues noted by therapists to a great extent for those people. We definitely come across people who present as having had an abortion and are angry that they could not have had the procedure in Ireland, had to travel and because it was complicated and traumatic for them to have to do that.

Deputy O'Sullivan is right about the statistics. We collect statistics from the national helpline, which gives the national figure, and from our own clients. Those show that over one third are parenting, a little under one third had a termination and the other third have miscarriages or are cases of historic pregnancies where children have been adopted or fostered. They are likely to be the older ones, people from years ago who come back to us later. That number is likely to go down. The Rape Crisis Network of Ireland has collected statistics from between 11 and 15 of the centres over the years including the rural centres to a great extent. A greater number of those, approximately 49%, are parenting and a little under 20% had terminations so there was a bit of a disparity. The numbers are still small. We can only report, as can the other rape crisis centres, on the people who tell us. Most people may never tell us at all.