More that 6,000 women giving Irish addresses had abortions in Britain last year, according to provisional figures released by the Office for National Statistics in England.
The figures for 1999 show a record 6,214 abortions carried out on women giving addresses in the Republic, compared with 5,891 in 1998. This is the first time the number has exceeded 6,000 and comes as the overall figures for England and Wales fell.
However, the Irish Family Planning Association noted that the annual rate of increase in reported abortions had slowed and suggested the official figures were now "closer to reality" as far as Irish women were concerned, reflecting an increased openness about the subject since the 1995 Information Act.
The association also stressed that the statistics represented only women who volunteered Irish addresses and could not be regarded as complete, but added that it had "contended for some time that increases recorded in recent years were the direct result of a more open society rather than, necessarily, a true increase in the numbers travelling".
The Pro-Life Campaign blamed the latest figures on the 1995 Act and said if the Government was serious about reducing the numbers of abortions, "the disastrous effects of the Information Act must be acknowledged".
A PLC spokesman added that by making it legal for counsellors to provide the addresses of clinics in England and by allowing clinics to advertise in the Irish media, the legislation had "singularly failed in its stated intention of reducing abortions".
He called on the Government to consider the evidence of the US-based Caring Foundation, which showed that "when the conditions pressurising women towards abortion are addressed, the incidence of abortion can be slowed down and even reversed".
The overall abortion figure for England and Wales was 183,200 last year, down from the record 187,400 in 1998. A spokesman for the Office for National Statistics said that while the Irish figures were provisional, only a slight variation could be expected in the final report.
The chief executive of the IFPA, Mr Tony O'Brien, said it was "obviously of concern" that the reported numbers of abortions continued to grow "at a time when as a country we are doing very little to seriously tackle the underlying issue of unplanned pregnancy". But the figures showed the 1995 Act's "huge impact on the willingness of women to discuss their unplanned pregnancies", an impact which had now filtered through to disclosing their correct addresses to abortion clinics.
"The Information Act has done a great service to individual women and our collective knowledge of the reality of Irish abortion. An average of almost 120 women per week gave an Irish address when having an abortion in England in 1999. That is about 23 women per day of clinic service."
