A year after it was set up, the Interdepartmental Working Group on Abortion has still not finished drafting the Green Paper on abortion promised by the Government. The document was initially expected in March last year, but due to the volume of submissions the group received, this was deferred until June and then until early this year.
There is now no date for its completion, according to a spokesman for the Department of Health. He added that 10,000 submissions have been received.
When completed, the draft will go to a Cabinet sub-committee, which will consider it before it goes before the full Cabinet prior to publication. The members of the sub-committee are: the Minister for Health, Mr Cowen; the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue; the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke; the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ms Liz O'Donnell; and the Attorney General, Mr David Byrne.
Advertisements placed in the national newspapers last January calling for submissions drew attention to existing legislation (the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act), the constitutional amendment seeking to prohibit abortion, the abortion Protocol to the Maastricht Treaty, and the two cases which permitted suicidal young girls to travel to Britain for abortions, the X and C cases.
While lobbying organisations such as the Pro-Life Campaign and groups dealing with women's health, such as the Irish Family Planning Association, are among those who have made submissions, none of the three Dublin maternity hospitals has done so. Nor has the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Therefore, most of the bodies directly involved in the provision of services to pregnant women have not offered a view on the subject to the working group.
Meanwhile, the former spokesman for the Pro-Life Campaign has warned that the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, is holding back on his commitment, given during the 1997 election campaign, to hold a referendum to prohibit abortion.
Writing in the Irish Catholic, Mr Denis Murphy pointed out that after the election this was made subject to the consultation process which has gone into the proposed Green Paper.
"Mr Ahern is a formidable politician," he said. "With him things can happen without he being directly involved . . . Taken as a whole, his moves on the abortion question do not indicate that he is setting up for a referendum to prohibit abortion. In fact, the opposite is the case."
In support of this view Mr Murphy referred to the composition of the Cabinet sub-committee and Mr Ahern's dismissal of the wording proposed by the Pro-Life Campaign during the election campaign for a new constitutional amendment.