Peter Fitzpatrick (Louth, Independent) | Oireachtas source

All amendment No. 43a does is require a doctor who carries out an abortion to provide information to the relevant authorities, which is on a par with what doctors in the UK have to report. As it stands, the Bill requires far less information to be gathered than is gathered in the UK. Why is this? Surely it is in the interests of the health service and the new abortion system to maximise the amount of information that will be compiled to allow us to monitor trends.

All the information will be gathered in strict confidence and anonymously. We gather all kinds of detailed information on all kinds of procedures, from routine procedures to more serious ones. This amendment would simply gather details on where the abortion took place, the point at which the termination took place and various other details. We gather this kind of information for every other procedure carried out by GPs and in hospitals. Why would anyone object to doing likewise for abortions?

All information published on foot of this would only be published in the same way as the Department of Health and the HSE statistics in a format that only gives national or regional pictures of the information and which in no way identifies any particular person or her particular case.

Surely even supporters of the Bill want the maximum information to be gathered. It would allow improvement over time. If we do not seek to gather this information, we will have no way to monitor trends or to see how the Bill is operating in practice.

The Bill provides for review of its operation by the Minister after three years. How is such a review to be carried out properly without all possible information on how the Bill acts in practice and being able to ascertain who is availing of the services?

I do not believe that it is adequate for the Minister to provide for gathering this information by regulation. The information requirement needs to be set clearly in stone in the Bill at this Stage. For this reason, I will support amendment No. 43a.

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