Health Minister Leo Varadkar has insisted that there will ‘never be perfect legislation that removes all tragedies related to pregnancy'.

Speaking about a possible abortion referendum in the Dail on Thursday, he said that he believed it would be a ‘really bad idea' to hold such a referendum in the lead up to the next general election ‘because we have been there before'.

"That's exactly what happened in 1983. In the run-up to a general election people were put in a position where they made commitments that maybe they shouldn't have, so let's not repeat the mistake of 1983 and have all that again in 2015," he said.

He insisted that there is a right time and place for a ‘considered non-ideological debate' about this controversial issue, but this should not be done ‘on foot of a tragedy or a very hard case and it shouldn't be done in the run-up to a general election'.

He also told the Dail that abortion in Ireland has often been made a ‘Catholic versus anti-Catholic' issue, ‘rather than looking at what is right and what is wrong'.

"It is framed in terms of Christian ideology versus social ideology or being pro-choice or anti-choice, as if you could ever reduce it to that, because human experience is not black and white and medicine is not black and white either."