Mrs. Justice Catherine McGuinness:

I thank the committee for its courtesy in inviting me here. I am not quite sure why exactly I was chosen but I am happy to try to be of as much assistance to the committee as I possibly can. As committee members can see, I suffered an accident and I have been relatively ill in recent weeks, so I have not had an opportunity to prepare an opening statement but I would like to stress several points at the beginning.

I am not representing the Judiciary in any way. I retired from the Judiciary in November 2006 and I also retired from the Law Reform Commission. As some committee members know well, I was recently heavily involved in other issues leading to 10 November 2012. At lunchtime, I was described on the radio as being someone who would hold more liberal views than Professor Binchy. I do not believe my views are relevant to this. I am here as a lawyer and I want to speak about the law. I am not trying to put forward my views or those of anybody else. I wish to make my position clear as far as the law is concerned.

Professor Binchy has made many criticisms of the X judgment. I reread the entire judgment last night and I have a different opinion of it, in that I feel the court made a genuine effort to reach the huge human dilemma put before it rather than simply approaching the matter from a theoretical point of view.

It made excellent arguments with regard to the way in which the Constitution should be interpreted in a traditional way following the previous judgments of Mr. Justice Walsh, who was recognised as our most prominent constitutional judge, as it were, and bringing together the 1983 amendment to the Constitution with Article 41, which refers to the important role of the mother in the home and her position as a woman in the constitutional family.

Neither Professor Binchy's views of the judgment nor mine are relevant to what the Oireachtas must do. As the Supreme Court reached its decision in the X case, that is an authoritative interpretation of the wording of the 1983 amendment. There have been other cases since, some of them not well known because they were held in camera, but this interpretation stands.

Two further referendums proposed changes in the formula to exclude self-destruction; they failed. Many will claim that people voted for this or that reason, but we do not know for what reasons they voted. The ballots were secret.

The X case judgment stands and is the law of this country. It is an outline and legislation is necessary for more detail. This is what was re-emphasised in the A, B and C v. Ireland case. The latter case did not go into the details. It emphasised that, although the law existed, it needed clarification, as Professor Binchy stated.

The Government now proposes to take this long-delayed step. I consider that it is correct in law in so doing. I also believe that it is right in using outline legislation and regulations to achieve this end. This is my belief because I saw what happened with divorce legislation, in that all of the detail of the reasons for divorce and so on have been inserted into the Constitution, thus making it impossible to reform them in any way without a referendum. The committee's approach is right.

Implied in this is the need to change the criminal law. We are working on an Act that was passed in 1861. Reading it, one realises how odd the phraseology is and the difficulty it presents, in that it is a sword of Damocles held over the medical profession.

I will not go into the arguments about the medical evidence presented to the committee. I am not a medical expert and am not qualified to comment on that evidence.

As most members know, I am a practising member of the Church of Ireland, which does not necessarily exact from its members unquestioning obedience to statements of the House of Bishops or the standing committee of the General Synod. However, I am largely in agreement with the position taken by the Church of Ireland in its statements on this subject. The committee will hear those statements in more detail tomorrow.

I have no desire to enter into aggressive debate on this matter. Professor Binchy will not be an aggressive debater in that sense either. However, I reflect the views of a large number of men and women who are holding the middle ground and do not believe that one or other position is absolutely right and we should all run along with it.

Professor Binchy has discussed the need for legal support for the actuality on the ground. I wish to examine that actuality rather than the esoteric conditions of the maternity hospitals alone. Professor Binchy's comments regarding those hospitals were right, but he has forgotten the thousands of Irish women who travel abroad for abortions. To say that we have no abortion in Ireland is simply not true. We have abortion - we just have it elsewhere. In the 1983 amendment, we considered an ideal situation and decided that we did not want abortion on the one hand and, on the other, that we also wanted an escape route. As soon as the X case concluded, we voted for the right to travel and the right to information. Why did we do so if it was not the case that we wanted an escape route from the absolute?

The grounds of suicide have been introduced because we insist on saying that it must be a risk to life only, not a risk to health. If one allowed a 14 year old who had been sexually abused and raped an abortion for that reason rather than a threat to her life, the grounds of suicide would create difficulties for legislators because they insist on having the threat to her life as the only grounds. The Oireachtas is legally bound to stick with the X case. If legislators want to remove suicide as grounds, they must hold a referendum. Even Professor Binchy acknowledged this on today's "Morning Ireland", more or less. Under the Constitution, the Supreme Court must interpret the law. It has interpreted the law and the Oireachtas is stuck with it. Perhaps I am prejudiced as a past member of the court, but I believe that I am constitutionally correct.