A recommendation from the Crisis Pregnancy Agency (CPA) that a regulatory body be set up to police agencies providing counselling services for women with crisis pregnancies will be considered, the Minister for Health Mary Harney confirmed yesterday.
The advice was proffered recently by the agency in response to reports of women having attended advertised counselling services only to find their main purpose seemed to be to put them off having an abortion rather than discussing with them all their options.
Launching the agency's latest annual report, Ms Harney said she would "take very seriously" any recommendation from them because she regarded it as the appropriate agency to advise the Minister on such issues.
But she said: "Legislation in itself would not prevent rogue agencies just as it doesn't prevent rogue companies from establishing themselves and we've often seen where one company is closed for whatever reason, some of the same principals re-establish themselves under another name and it's very hard for legislation to deal with that.
"I'd love to see an accreditation system perhaps operated by the CPA...I think if we had a quality mark associated with an agency, then people would know that organisation is authoritative in this area and has expertise and can provide a valuable service. I think that might be the way to go and I look forward to discussing that with the agency."
There was no point, the Minister added, putting bureaucracy in place to deal with "one or two incidents" when the money could be used more productively in providing services.
Crisis Pregnancy Agency chairwoman Olive Braiden said her organisation was in advanced discussions with a university about plans to develop a third-level qualification in crisis pregnancy counselling skills. She also said there had been a steady decline in the number of teenage births in the past five years since the agency was established. They dropped from 3,087 in 2001 to 2,427 in 2005. In addition, the number of women giving Irish addresses at UK abortion clinics had declined by 1,000 since 2001. Ms Braiden said, however, that Irish women may now be travelling to other EU countries for abortions.
Meanwhile, she confirmed the agency is still funding Cura, the crisis pregnancy organisation of the Catholic Church, despite the fact that Cura does not, on the advice of the Catholic bishops, hand out the CPA's Positive Options leaflet. The leaflet contains details of agencies which supply abortion information. As part of its "service-level agreement" with the CPA, Cura is expected to make the leaflet available to women seeking help.
"Agencies who do not comply with the agreements they signed up for at the beginning will not be funded but, of course, we just don't stop the funding. We discuss with them the difficulties they have and we explain the services we need for women."