Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our guests in the Gallery. The much anticipated report from the three-year review into Ireland's abortion legislation was released on 25 April. Before its official release a series of leaks to The Irish Timesindicated that the report would recommend sweeping changes to abortion law. These leaked reports seemed to confirm what many people feared, which is that the eventual recommendations would be radical and entirely one-sided. From the word go, all signs suggested the review would be anything but independent. In summer 2021, the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly, met a selective group of people who all think and thought virtually the same things about abortion. They were all brought together by the National Women's Council. These included groups such as the Abortion Rights Campaign, the coalition to repeal the eighth amendment and other similar groups. There was no interest, of course, in talking to those who would wish to see the unborn protected in whatever way was possible under the new law.

In December 2021, the Minister promised that the so-called independent chairperson to lead the review would be appointed by public tender. We know this did not happen because it was done without a public tendering process and the person appointed was someone who had skin in the game, so to speak. It was a person who had been on the record in social media on the pro-repeal side. The question of independence was finessed by Government supporters suggesting that all that was meant by "independent" was somebody who was not in the Government, and was independent of the Government and the Department.

This spin raised questions about the integrity of the process from the start and about the professionalism of the people driving the process. It was no surprise to see many major shortcomings in the report, quite apart from the extreme nature of its recommendations. For instance, and remarkably, on page 6, the author of the report writes that between the beginning of January 2019 and the end of December 2022, there had been approximately 17,820 abortions. While she acknowledged in a footnote that these figures might not be accurate, she then failed to do the work required to calculate an accurate figure. Last year, the Department of Health acknowledged there were an extra 2,000 abortions in 2021. Similarly the report chairperson failed to include a staggering 8,500 abortions in 2022, which the Minister revealed in an impromptu radio appearance.

This supposedly independent chairperson produced a report that underestimated the total abortion rate by approximately 40%. Factual errors such as this are just not acceptable. The report and the review should have examined the startlingly high abortion rates we have had in just four years. There was only cursory treatment, and no interest in evidence-based analysis, on the issues of the necessity for precautionary pain relief for the unborn.On the issue of the three-day waiting period, she relied on activist research designed to minimise the number of women who opted not to have an abortion having had the first consultation. She came in with the remarkably low figure of 2% but could have relied on the HSE figures, released in reply to questions in the Dáil, which show that as many as 4,000 of the approximately 30,000 women who had abortions in recent years may have changed their minds. Even allowing for miscarriages and some women possibly having gone elsewhere for an abortion, that would indicate a figure of approximately 17%. It is an issue of integrity - the integrity of the Minister and the Department.

I do not necessarily blame people who have particular views for accepting an appointment to organise and produce a report that is supposed to be independent, but they have to be judged by what they have produced. Everything in this report suggests extreme bias. There is a failure to examine the issues that might suggest there is something wrong with the way the abortion law is operating, with such an increase in abortion rates, and a desire to bolster the case for removing the three-day waiting period.

In light of all that, I am not surprised that the Minister of State, Deputy Niall Collins, has been left to take this Commencement matter. I am not blaming him. The Department of Health and the Minister run away from the hard questions about abortion and the way the abortion law is acting. It is disgraceful. It lacks integrity and is unprofessional. I do not blame the Minister of State, Deputy Collins, for that but I do not anticipate any great humility in the words that have been prepared for him to deliver in respect of this appalling report.