Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is what we are doing, and parties on all sides asked me to do it. This is what we are working on together. That is why we are laying the regulations before the House.

The first step is to regulate counsellors and psychotherapists. That is what the regulations before the House involve. We will then set up the registration board. We will populate that through the Public Appointments Service, which will set the minimum qualifications. Once counsellors are regulated under the 2005 Act, one option available to me, which is quite appealing, would be to review the Regulation of Information (Services Outside the State For Termination of Pregnancies) Act to amend the 2005 Act in order to prevent professionals who are not regulated by the State from providing crisis pregnancy counselling services. There are ways in which we can deal with this effectively and legally. The challenge we have all been trying to deal with is to work out a way in which we can bring about an end to a practice I certainly thought all of us wanted to end. Today is the first step on that road. We should try to pass the regulations as quickly as possible in order that we can move to setting up the necessary infrastructure.

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