Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I indicated in my contribution that I understood the assumption. I do not believe the concern must be grave in order to have us consider injecting the phrase with which I have tried to achieve better clarity. It is very important that we convey our expectations. The utilisation of "shall make" does not place a requirement on the medical practitioner to act even the same day. The Minister spoke about a situation where something else might arise, but something else might arise that is not relevant to the circumstances of the unfortunate woman in any given situation that may come under the remit of these medical practitioners. Something else might take them away to deal with something else, which is often the case. No doubt the Minister is familiar with the practice of particular acute hospital settings, where there is so much to be done and the general thrust of the day's workload is to move on.

We need to reflect strongly the requirement to act with appropriate urgency and immediacy in the situations I have described. That woman cannot wait for another circumstance to be attended to or addressed. It is the requirement of the system to provide adequate resourcing and staffing to ensure that where a situation such as this arises - where a woman's life is at risk, either due to physical illness or in the circumstances of section 9 certification in regard to the risk of loss of life due to suicide - these cases are priority cases that must be addressed and concluded before any other situation is undertaken.

We have experience and many examples of the situation in hospitals where people wait for assistance. Sadly, in today's acute hospital network, people can be waiting for days in inappropriate situations, sometimes for what we might regard as straightforward address and attention. In life-threatening and life-at-risk situations, we cannot tolerate that and this must be conveyed in the wording of the legislation so as to make it abundantly clear to all concerned that there needs to be the urgency these amendments seek to reflect in the Bill.

In regard to the number of days, it may well be the case, and one would hope it would prove to be in time, that the seven days is the outside marker and that review committees would conclude and report their business within a much shorter timeframe. It is important this is the case and I hope practice will demonstrate it to be so. However, I am still not of a mind to accept that seven days is reasonable where we are talking about either two highly qualified medical practitioners in regard to a section 7 referral or three in regard to a section 9 referral.

I do not accept that they could not conclude their assessment within a shorter timeframe. It is my view that between their being constituted as a review committee over three days and their concluding their assessments and deliberations and signing off on either granting the certification or affirming the first refusal, whichever scenario presents, this can all be done within a four day period. I would not suggest reducing the time allowed from seven days to four if I thought for one moment that it was unreasonable or could create unsound outcomes owing to unnecessary haste. I am convinced in putting forward this amendment - we have given careful thought to all our proposals - that four days is a reasonable timeframe. I again ask for the Minister's reconsideration of this amendment.

On the question of conscientious objection, there is and can be no toleration whatsoever of any undue delay in seeking to make arrangements for an alternative medical practitioner to fill that role. If a medical practitioner across any of the disciplines and specialties has a conscientious objection to dealing with a woman's situation, it is not in any way an inordinate demand that such arrangements be made immediately. Nothing else suffices.

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