Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I also welcome our distinguished guests on both sides, including our Czech guests, who will be aware that the infant child of Prague played an important role in the success of many an Irish wedding by being left outside on the eve of the wedding in the hope of getting good weather for the photographs the following day, although I know of one unhappy Irish mother who in her pique at the bad weather left the infant child of Prague out for the whole week just to punish him in the elements subsequently.

On a more sombre note, I attended a meeting of the Joint Committee on Health last week where the report of the three-year review of abortion legislation was discussed. This report drew on research that interviewed 58 women who had abortions and doctors who performed abortions. It leaned on the WHO's so-called abortion care guidelines of 2022, which advocates removing mandatory waiting periods. What is interesting is that the report and its writers did not examine or even reference other jurisdictions that have mandatory abortion waiting periods, including over half of all US states and several countries. In May, the chairperson of the review replied, "No, I have not" when asked whether the report's writers had spoken to any women who went through the three-day waiting period in Ireland and decided to go ahead and have their child. Even more remarkably, when asked last week if there was anywhere in the world where there was a mandatory three-day delay for any medical procedure, the chairperson Marie O'Shea said, "Not that I am aware of". Evidently, she was unaware of or ignored the jurisdictions that have mandatory waiting periods for abortion. That is remarkable.

You have the chairperson of the abortion review, which is supposed to be an independent and evidence-led report, providing the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health with inaccurate information, failing to bring relevant information to the committee, failing to refer to it in the report and implying, as she seems to wish to do, that Ireland was an international outlier in mandating a three-day waiting period and that we were somehow out of step. It beggars belief and raises the question about the money spent on this so-called independent report. It is not a joke. It is an expensive joke at the expense of the Irish taxpayer.

The report cited a study by the START doctors' group claiming that just 2% of women made the initial appointment but did not proceed to the second appointment but ignored information from the HSE showing the overall figure was closer to 16.5% of all initial cases. There was obvious cherry-picking of which evidence to include in this review and which to exclude. There was no interview with a single woman who changed her mind and did not have an abortion. While it was claimed that it would somehow be unethical to interview women with this experience, as it would be potential traumatic to ask why they changed their minds and then had the baby, these same researchers did not express such a concern about the ethics of the traumatising impact of interviewing survivors of sexual assault who had abortions, an experience that is potentially far more traumatic than a woman using the three-day waiting period to reflect on her options and deciding to keep her baby.

Serious questions must be asked about this report, which was supposed to be independent, and the highly tendentious and partisan approach its chair and writers have taken in the preparation of the report and in their evidence before the committee. At its worst, it is misinformation and, at best, it is failing to bring relevant information to the committee. The Minister for Health should answer questions about how this report was organised, how much money was spent on it and what the Government is going to do now in light of the misleading of people about some very relevant issues.