A referendum on abortion should not take place in the run-up to a general election because candidates might be forced into making commitments, Minister for Health Leo Varadkar has warned.

Rejecting an opposition call for a referendum on abortion in 2015 at the same time as the marriage equality plebiscite, Mr Varadkar said a referendum “shouldn’t be done on foot of a tragedy or a very hard case, and it shouldn’t be done on the run-in to a general election”.

He was responding in the Dáil during a topical issues debate when Socialist Party TD Ruth Coppinger and Independents Clare Daly and Mick Wallace called for a referendum to repeal the 8th amendment to the Constitution, in light of the Miss Y case.

The Minister said he believed the problem with the debate on abortion in Ireland “is that it has been dominated by the extremes and it’s framed in the Catholic versus anti-Catholic view of things rather than what’s right and what’s wrong”.

He said: “I think it would be a really bad idea in 2015 in the run-in to a general election for us to have that kind of debate happening in that milieu. Because we’ve been there before. That’s exactly what happened in 1983.

“In the run up to a general election people were put in the position where they made commitments that maybe they shouldn’t have. So let’s not repeat the mistakes of 1983 and have all that again in 2015.

“There is a time and a place I think for a considered non-ideological debate and conversation about this matter in this country. But it shouldn’t be done on foot of a tragedy or a very hard case and it shouldn’t be done on the run-in to a general election.”