Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----and through a number of cases of which many Members are aware. As Minister for Health, I produced the first national maternity strategy, which is a strategy to improve significantly our maternity services.

As Minister for Health I produced the first national maternity strategy, which is a strategy to improve our maternity services significantly, and as Taoiseach I am making sure the funding is in place to implement that over time.

Head 4, to which the Deputy referred, relates to viability, which is an issue of clinical judgment. It may be 23 weeks or it may be 24 weeks. It depends on a few things, namely, the gestation, the weight and the size. That has to be a clinical judgment. Part of the problem that we have in Ireland with our abortion laws is we have tried to define too much in the Constitution and have not allowed for clinical judgment. The term "viability" is there so clinical judgment can apply. We should bear in mind that medical science changes. It may be the case over time that viability comes down in terms of weeks, so we want to provide for that too. We do not want to put in 22 weeks or 23 weeks and then find out in a few years that new technology brings that backwards. That is why we put viability in as a legal concept, so it is based on clinical judgment of gestation, weight, size and modern clinical science.

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