Dr. Gilda Sedgh:

One of the pathways to reducing the level of unmet need for contraception is providing comprehensive sexuality education and improving not just the existence but the quality of services that are available. I may help Ms Hoctor answer a question that I think might be more in the Guttmacher Institute's area.

Deputy Naughton asked about the floodgates. We have tried to look at trends in abortion incidence before and after a large change. That is one aspect of the question. We are not able to do that very well because where abortion is illegal we often do not have a good fix on the number of abortions that are happening and then when abortion becomes legal, the number of abortions that are on the official record begin to increase, but we do not know to what extent that represents a shift from abortions that had been clandestine to abortions that are now not more common but more on the record. That will be the case in Ireland where we have accounts of women having abortions in England, Wales and in the Netherlands and some obtaining from Women on Web, but we do not fully know how many abortions are happening now.