Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I listened to the Minister's arguments against amendment No. 12. Obviously we agree with his amendment to reduce the review period to three years. If we do not pass amendment No. 12, very important information will not necessarily be collected to inform us whether women are being left outside this legislation in terms of their access to healthcare.

Deputy Donnelly said that in three years the Dáil can input into what we want included in the review. In three years' time it will be too late to gather the information we need to start gathering from the moment the legislation passes. We need to start to collate the information immediately the legislation is implemented and the services are established, to establish whether the legislation and the services are achieving what we want them to achieve.

Unless the Minister can tell us right now that he is guaranteeing us that all this information will be gathered - I do not really see how he could really do that - why would he not want it in the legislation that we are now committing that this information will be gathered? It should be the responsibility of the HSE and the various people involved in providing the services to log information as to whether, for example, significant numbers of women are finding it difficult to access the services, whether there are barriers, whether women from the North who need the services are able to access them and all of the other possible issues largely related to access and the effectiveness of the legislation. Unless the Minister gives us some other commitment, which he has not done at the moment, we need a commitment that information will be gathered. To wait for three years will be too late. We need the information from the word go.

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