Mr. Tom O'Malley:

I will answer the question about how other countries approach the matter. By way of sources of information, the Green Paper on abortion published in 1999 has an appendix which sets out the regime in other European countries, including this question of where it is available on the grounds of rape and the kinds of proof that are required. That is almost 20 years ago but there was a recent report by the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., a usually objective source of information, which looked at abortion laws in European countries which provides some information on that. The committee must remember that this is the kind of area that changes a lot since countries change their laws over time. In my research, two things come forward. Most European countries that allow abortion in these circumstances will have something to the effect of this, from Portuguese law, "there is serious evidence of a significant indication that pregnancy resulted from rape".

Likewise, in Germany, if there are serious grounds for the assumption that the pregnancy resulted from rape. What they are doing there is they are not insisting on anything like legal proof to the extent that would be required by way of criminal or a civil trial but rather some kind of serious grounds. Again, the question is how those grounds would be established. Some countries require a report from a prosecutor. A Polish case recently came before the ECHR. In Poland, the local prosecutor is entitled to issue a certificate saying that he is satisfied that a rape took place. In that case, it was what we would call a sexual act with a person under the age of 15. That would not be the role of a prosecutor within our system. The equivalent in our system would be for a member of the Garda or a senior Garda officer to have to issue such a certificate. However, all that goes back to the question of whether, and at what time, the matter had been reported to the Garda to begin with. It is almost a vicious circle in terms of whether the report has been made and at what point it has been made. The most difficult scenario would be where a report was not made in the immediate aftermath of the rape or another offence but where it is made several months down the road. That is all I can glean from the comparative survey I have done of laws in other countries.