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

They may well be safe but when it comes to any medicine that is bought online, one cannot always be sure it is what it says it is. Obviously, there are legal consequences as well. I think we all agree that it would be safer if they were legal and available here in Ireland.

There are two aspects to this conversation that perhaps have not got the recognition or notice they deserve. First, abortion rates in Ireland are falling. The number of women who travel overseas to end their pregnancies giving an Irish address has actually been falling in the past number of years. That is a good thing. It is something to be welcomed. Teenage pregnancies in Ireland are at their lowest since the 1950s. We do need to ask ourselves why that is. It is because of funding provided to groups like the Rape Crisis Centres and the Crisis Pregnancy Agency. It is because of sex education in our schools, the wider availability of contraception and the availability of the morning-after pill. These are changes and reforms that have happened in the past ten or 20 years that have reduced the number of crisis pregnancies, abortions and teenage pregnancies. There is a certain irony in the fact that those who are most opposed to the change we are proposing - those who are so convinced that a "No" vote is the right thing to do - are very often the same people who opposed the morning-after pill, contraception and sex education - all the things that have actually made abortion less common in the past number of years. One thing I do want to say to people because I think it is one thing on which everyone agrees regardless of whether they are on the "Yes" or "No" side is that we should continue in our efforts to reduce the number of crisis pregnancies in the first place regardless of the result at the weekend. This will mean delivering on our commitment and implementing the recommendations made by the all-party committee to make contraception more available and to improve sex education in our schools so that we can continue to see a fall in the number of crisis pregnancies in the first place.

See this speech in context