Over 4,400 women with Irish addresses travelled to the UK for an abortion last year, new figures have shown.

According to the figures from the UK Department of Health, in 2010, 4,402 women with Irish addresses had abortions in England and Wales - that is equivalent to 12 women per day.

This represents a drop of just 20 on the previous year - a decline of 0.5%.

Women in their 20s represented 53% of the total figure of those travelling from Ireland, while women in their 30s made up 31%. Women aged 40 and older represented 6% of the figure, with teenagers making up the remainder.

The figures showed that two in three abortions carried out in the UK on non-UK residents involved Irish women.

The majority (68%) of abortions were carried out at under nine weeks gestation.

"The harsh reality behind these statistics is that every day, 12 women must travel to Britain to access safe and legal abortion services. Unplanned pregnancies have and always will be a fact of women's lives.

"The statistics show that the women, girls and couples who travel to Britain for an abortion come from all walks of life and all stages of life. They do so after weighing up a complex set of personal and emotional factors," commented Niall Behan, chief executive of the Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA).

He noted that since 1980, at least 147,800 women have travelled from Ireland to Britain for abortion services.

"These figures serve to highlight yet again the hypocrisy of Ireland's restrictive abortion laws and clearly demonstrate the necessity for domestic-based abortion services in Ireland," Mr Behan insisted.

He said that many clients attending IFPA services for pregnancy counselling express frustration and anger that they have to leave Ireland to access health services that they feel should be available to them here.

"Women don't want sympathy, they simply want access to the health services they need."

Also responding to the figures, the HSE Crisis Pregnancy Programme said that this marked the ninth year in a row that a decrease in the number of Irish women travelling to the UK has been recorded. In 2001, the figure stood at 6,673.

It also noted that there has been a large decline in the number of women giving Irish addresses at abortion clinics in the Netherlands. Statistics show that this figure fell from 134 in 2009 to 31 in 2010.