Rónán Mullen (Independent)
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I thank the Chairman. I am very grateful to her for affording me this opportunity and I will be brief.

I note that Dr. Peter Boylan sent in an email today just before the Committee met, relating to last week’s proceedings. I also note that you read his email into the record at today’s first session of the Committee. [I have no problem with that] I believe that Dr. Boylan has misrepresented me and that nothing that I said was at variance with the facts ... Dr. Boylan claims that I "made several assertions at odds with the facts" at the Committee hearing at which he appeared last Wednesday. He only attempts to provide one such assertion and even there he doesn’t manage to bring his claim home.

I said at the Committee that the doctors involved in the Savita Halappanavar case "did not claim that it was down to the law in Ireland but that it was down to the mismanagement of a situation". My point has been, and remains, that the doctors involved in that tragic case did not try to blame the law in Ireland for what happened to Savita, but rather that they acknowledged the medical mismanagement of her sepsis. I have been critical, and remain so, of campaigners who try to exploit Savita’s death to bring about the legalisation of abortion, when it has always been the case that any life-saving treatment a mother needs, including treatment that brings her pregnancy to an end, is legal and is routine practice.

In support of his claim, Dr. Boylan draws attention to a transcript of the inquest and in particular to a section in which the consultant in the case was asked if she felt "constrained or inhibited by Irish law" and her answer of "Yes. Because termination of a pregnancy which is what she was requesting, is not legal in the context in which she requested it". The doctor had just stated that she understood the late Savita was "not physically unwell" and because "the law states that in the absence of risk to the life of the mother there is no reason to intervene". At a later point in the transcript, the doctor says that, had she been aware of certain physical symptoms which had been noted earlier, she would have intervened. So it is clear that the doctors never sought to blame Savita’s death on their being unable to give necessary treatment because of the law in Ireland. My presentation of the facts at the Committee was therefore completely accurate. Dr. Boylan shouldn’t misrepresent my words.

It is noteworthy in passing that several obstetricians and a consultant in emergency medicine have taken issue in public with Dr. Boylan’s opinion that Irish law prevented necessary treatment to save Savita Halappanavar’s life - see Irish Times Letters, 1st May 2013. They suggest that Dr Boylan’s view on this matter is "a personal view, not an expert one".

That concludes that portion of the statement I issued today relating to Dr. Boylan's comments. I am very grateful to the Chairman for giving me the opportunity to put this on the record promptly. Because the committee will not meet next week two weeks would have elapsed before I had the opportunity to take issue with what Dr. Boylan had said in his complaint.