Dáil debates

Wednesday, 28 November 2018

Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Bill 2018: Report Stage (Resumed)

 

6:45 pm

Photo of Simon HarrisSimon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----and much more importantly to clinicians and women. Amendment No. 12 is specifying that in three years' time this is what should be done. I am saying that we will do better than that and that we will lay before the Houses a report with statistics and data. I am saying that - this is not a new commitment the Deputy needs from me - the HSE, as the operators of the service, can and will appear before Oireachtas committees to answer questions from the Deputy and his colleagues regularly.

This is a review of the operation of the Act. This should be about talking to doctors, the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and women's advocate groups about how the Act is operating and not reviewing the recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly which at that stage will be relatively old. It is about checking what I believe the people voted for in passing the referendum and what their representatives voted for in legislating is working on the ground.

Much of the data the Deputy is seeking already exist. For example, section 2(b) calls for information on "the number of pregnant people who may require travel to other jurisdictions to avail of terminations of pregnancy". Without being in any way flippant, insofar as people give addresses, we can find out this evening, on the British Department of Health and Social Care website, how many Irish women have travelled to Britain.

I certainly do not do not intend to wait three years before we address the issue of women from Northern Ireland accessing services. Barriers to access to services under the Act are very much at the core of the three year review. The only one that presents a challenge to calculate is the categories of pregnant people who may be unable to avail of services under the Act. We would need some research methodology from an external reviewer to get to the bottom of that.

This is a three year review that will learn from the mistakes of other countries that passed legislation and left it on the shelf gathering dust without checking whether it was working for women and doctors. We will not do that. However, we should not be overly prescriptive. If we were being prescriptive, we would probably have missed a number of the core things that should be part of any review.

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