A legal expert has told the Oireachtas Committee looking at abortion legislation that fears of the floodgates being opened to widespread terminations are "completely unfounded".

“IN 1995 the police in Greater Manchester seized the grand total of 12 indecent images of children. All of them were on paper or on video. In 1999 we seized 41,000, all bar three of which had come from the internet. Today we don’t bother counting. There’s no point.”