Legislation has been introduced in the Dáil to clamp down on rogue agencies offering false information about abortion.

It comes after a clinic in Dublin wrongly told an undercover reporter that women who have abortions are more at risk of breast cancer.

"There are more breast cancers found in groups of women who had abortions than any other group", a counsellor claimed.

She told a reporter with The Times Ireland back in September that terminations can also turn a woman into a child abuser.

"Now that doesn't mean that women get their kids and knock the head off them. It means they they have been known to neglect their children or overprotect them, it's a psychological thing - like a bereavement", she claimed.

The centre in question is said to advertise itself as an impartial source of advice for women who want to travel to Britain to end their pregnancies.

The facility - which says it has other clinics in Cork, Galway, Sligo, London and Bristol - claims to have helped thousands of women over the last 20 years.

The move has been tabled by the Labour Party leader Brendan Howlin.

He says there were concerns about crisis pregnancy advice when he was health minister 20 years ago.

"None of us could have imagined that 20 years later that there would still be agencies operating in a way that clearly does not given women the accurate and compassionate and true information that they need - and that the law and the Constitution of this State have determined that they're entitled to."