David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I give a guarded welcome to this Bill dealing with abortion because it is very little, very late and does not address significant issues such as rape, incest and fatal foetal abnormality. If I were a woman I would not be reassured by being told the legislators are apparently not concerned with the health of a woman. They should be. It is not enough simply to state that there should be a respectful and courteous debate here, and then for people to go on and impugn other professional people. I have never said that the leader of Fianna Fáil did that, never, but other Members of this House have. I have heard them speaking about "bogus medicine", accusing a distinguished psychiatrist of a corruption of medicine. I do not consider that respectful.

I do not consider it respectful when some young woman is incited to go into a politician's clinic, lie about her position, lead people into stating what their views are, record it on a telephone and leak it to a newspaper. Then they complain about duplicity. That woman was a liar, very dishonest, and I would like to know her name. She was broadcasting everybody else's name but wanted her privacy. That is not appropriate behaviour from these people who call themselves "pro-life". Let us have a really open, honest, truthful debate with courtesy but it is not enough to say we are being courteous and then be completely discourteous, dishonest and libellous about people.

I am glad the Minister for Health, Deputy Reilly, said this would have to be revisited. So it should be. I agree with what those Labour Party Deputies said. They were perfectly right, as anybody who has a feeling for the humanity of women would want to agree with.

I am delighted that the pensioners of Waterford Crystal got their pensions. This is what they were entitled to and I am glad the European Court of Justice ruled on this but sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. We are facing a massive pension problem in this country because our pensions were raided. Some €17.5 billion was taken out of them at the behest of the ECB and the troika. If our pension system collapses as a result of that, because we have nothing left in the kitty to pay the pensions, I assume the European Court of Justice will say it is over to the European authority to pay our pensions, and so it should because what is true in the microcosm should also be true in the macrocosm.

I am sure all Members have received the Illicit Tobacco Trade Review. The people who produce it are very coy indeed. They are "JTI" but they never spell out what that stands for. People should know that JTI is Japan Tobacco International, an Asian branch of one of the largest American tobacco, cancer-inducing companies. They have all this flummery here-----