“In some hospitals, conscientious objection has actually become obstruction whereby people are – in a very small number and I don’t want to overegg this – but in a very small number I do believe there are some doctors in our hospitals who are gone beyond their own conscientious objection to actually trying to obstruct the establishment of a service,” he said.

“And that’s not on, I’m not going to tolerate it, the HSE is not going to tolerate it, and the Government is not going to tolerate it either. So any doctor has the right to opt out, but that’s very different to hearing doctors standing up at rallies saying the service will never be provided in their hospital. Because you know what, its not their hospital, its our hospital and a hospital for the women of Ireland”.

He apparently was referring to a speech given by Consultant Obstetrician at St Luke’s Kilkenny General Hospital, Dr Trevor Hayes, at the recent Rally for Life in Dublin. Dr Hayes said he and other prolife doctors would not be bullied or forced into performing or facilitating abortions. He also asked if politicians who are attacking pro-life doctors would be willing to perform an abortion themselves.

Mr Harris continued by outlining a way he could circumvent the opposition of frontline obstetricians.

“I do obviously have the powers to direct the HSE to provide services as well. And that’s certainly an option that I’m going to keep available that if we can’t have services provided through the natural way of asking people to provide them in certain parts of the country that we can actually put in a direct HSE staff resource into that part of the country”.

“So I would rather not do that, I would rather continue to win the argument that our healthcare professionals would respect the will of the Irish people through their vote, but that is certainly an option”.