The Cabinet failed to reach agreement on a new abortion law at its meeting yesterday.

Senior Ministers are reported to have held crisis talks last night after the Cabinet could not agree on the new legislation intended to clarify the legal position on termination where a woman's life is in danger, in the wake of the X Case ruling  and the European Court judgement in the A, B and C case.

The big issue still appears to be how many specialist doctors should be involved in assessing suicide risk as a grounds for abortion.

While Health Minister James Reilly yesterday denied reports that six specialists, including four psychiatrists, would assess these cases, it is believed that that this proposal is still on the table and is causing divisions at Cabinet level.

This proposal has already been described as unworkable by experts and is being opposed by Labour.

The Irish Independent reported this morning that the plan to have a six-consultant assessment in two stages is contained in a draft outline of the legislation.

The Expert Group report, set up to advise the Government on future legislation, proposed late last year that a maximum of three consultants should assess whether as termination is needed.

The report outlined three options in this regard:

Firstly, that two doctors of a relevant specialty and expertise associated with the case should be involved in assessment; secondly, two doctors, one of whom would be an obstetrician in all cases should carry out an assessment, and thirdly, two doctors from a relevant specialty plus an obstetrician should assess the case.

The report says the third option would meet clinical challenges in correctly diagnosing expressed suicide intent.

"It could be argued that a risk to life from suicide warrants extra safeguards. In such cases, two psychiatrists would be involved in addition to an obstetrician/gynaecologist," the Expert Group proposed.

Its report says in extremely rare circumstances where the risk to the life of the mother is imminent and it is not possible to seek the advice and assistance of additional doctors, the opinion of one doctor should suffice.

What is now believed to be proposed is that the first phase of termination assessment where there is a threat of suicide would involve one obstetrician and two psychiatrists, one of whom would have to be a perinatal psychiatrist, who would have to 'jointly certify in their reasonable opinion there is a real and substantial risk' to the life of the mother.

In the second phase, a second obstetrician and two more psychiatrists would review the opinion and, where appropriate, certify that they agree with the opinion of the first three doctors.

The publication of the planned legislation has been put back to next week, but there is still considerable uncertainty on if and when agreement will be reached on the issue at Government level.