Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have heard what the Minister of State has had to say and respectfully disagree with my friend Senator Norris on the issue. I have looked at the abortion notification form in the United Kingdom and read section 20 of the Bill. Subsection (2)(c), for instance, refers to the need for the county or place of residence of the pregnant woman to be recorded. Let us simplify the matter a little. From a public policy or economic standpoint, the HSE spends taxpayers' money. If termination of pregnancy procedures - I do not use the word "treatments", but it has been used on the pro-choice side - are to be carried out in public hospitals, as in the case of every other procedure, surely there should be financial accountability. We should know that there is financial oversight and transparency in the expenditure of taxpayers' money, just as we do when Beaumount Hospital or Letterkenny University Hospital, for instance, carries out hip procedures. We know how much those procedures cost because there are data to follow. I do not understand from where the requirement to record the county of residence of the pregnant woman comes because it does not follow any demarcation line associated with the HSE which is divided into regions and subdivided into hospitals. Therefore, it really does not make sense to me. I do not know from where the provision was plucked.

I have with me a copy of the notification form for England and Wales. The information - postcode, name and address - is sent from the facility to the chief medical officer as part of a data collation exercise. That is the way good public policy is made. Students of public policy learn at university how to make good public policy. One does so through the collation of intelligence that is factually correct. The Bill, as drafted, will not allow this to happen because the information collected will be so sparse as to render it almost useless. This is not about the infringement of anyone's rights but about collecting relevant and useable information. The proposed amendment follows what is provided for in the United Kingdom, but it does not even go as far as what is done there. In fact, in several respects it much less comprehensive than the English regulations. For example, it would not require provision of the woman's address, postcode or date of birth. It is also important to recall that section 20(5) of the Bill clearly ensures reports under the section will exclude information that could lead to the identification of individuals. Accordingly, as in England, the information would be published annually in a manner that would not breach confidentiality.

The amendment respects the principles of transparency and open government. It is plainly unacceptable to hide the facts of the operation of the Bill from the public because, ultimately, it will be a taxpayer-funded abortion system, a point we have not really discussed on Second Stage or Committee Stage. We will probably get to it on Report Stage. Section 20 provides for the publication of an annual report that will omit most of the information relevant to the operation of the Bill. Therefore, the information that will be collected under section 20 will be irrelevant and not specific. I presume this is being done intentionally. By contrast, the English regulations have a proven track record in consistently facilitating the publication annually of very detailed information, as is clear from the annual statistical publications. This information is important for sociological and research purposes and as a means of ensuring the formation of public policy in the future will be based on very reliable and accurate information. Both sides of the abortion debate should seek to have information that is accurate and reliable. One cannot make a charge against someone that the information he or she has is not reliable if one is not willing to support measures that would provide us with accurate and reliable information in the future. That is the purpose of the amendment.

The Minister might address the issue by regulations, if he so wishes. The information sought is simply too important to leave the matter to a Minister because, obviously, Ministers come and go. Moreover, from consideration of sections 3, 19 and 20 of the Bill, the Minister does not seem to have the power under the Bill to address the issue. This is because sections 19 and 20 do not enable the Minister to prescribe additional information to that stipulated in section 20 for inclusion in the notification to be sent to him. It is these notifications that will provide the basis for the report to be published under section 20. Even from the point of view of the collection of information, for the Minister for Health to know how the system is working and have accurate information, it is important for him to have this information. The public is also entitled to know how the law is operating and the associated trends in the carrying out of abortions in the aftermath of this massive change in Irish social policy. The State cannot credibly withhold this information from the public; it should be readily available to it. It is not good enough that it might be made available under regulations at some future date at a Minister's choosing.The purpose of the amendment is really to improve the information gathering.

On the rationale for the introduction of abortion here, many on the pro-choice side were using the argument that an Irish woman had to leave these shores to obtain an abortion. That fact will mean that if an Irish woman wants to obtain an abortion in Manchester or London, she will have to provide all the information in question in the form prescribed in England, but if she wants to obtain an abortion in Ireland she will not have to do so. We will therefore be depending on the British system to provide us with more accurate information than we can collect here. It does not really make any sense. I just cannot understand it. That is the relevance of the amendment.