Tánaiste Joan Burton has said she agrees with Minister for Health Leo Varadkar’s comments that the current abortion laws are “too restrictive”.

Ms Burton also said she would like to see the eighth amendment to the constitution, which gives equal rights to life to the mother and the unborn, repealed.

However, in a Christmas briefing with political correspondents, she declined to comment on the right to life case currently in the public domain.

On the issue in general, she said: “The people that I want to see around the bed are the doctors, not the lawyers.

“In my view the eighth amendment does not actually serve women well when issues of their life, their safety, their health, are in question.”

"The thing that I find extraordinarily difficult about this kind of a case is that as a consequence of the eighth amendment, and I'm somebody who was opposed to the eighth amendment, the Labour Party was opposed to the eighth amendment, we said it was wrong to put it into the constitution, but the people of Ireland in their wisdom decided differently - and that's their prerogative in any referendum to make a decision as they see fit," Mr Burton said.

“But, what we have now, and will have, without a doubt, is over a period of time cases which will throw up the most agonising and difficult dilemmas and at the centre of that will inevitably be young women and the babies that they’re carrying.

“Now, if my daughter, or my nieces, or anyone in my circle, my friends, my family, my neighbours, is facing a pregnancy and the pregnancy and the delivery become very difficult, thankfully in Ireland our maternity services are pretty good, very good, but we all know that difficult situations arise.”