Fr. Timothy Bartlett:

I thank the Chairman for his warm welcome. It strikes me, as a I listen to the various contributions this morning, that we work together very closely as churches and as faith communities. Rev. Dr. Michael Jackson and I have debated very honestly and openly in public fora about faith, the challenges to faith and so on. The thread that has been running through all of our contributions and which I think unites everybody in this room, is our shared desire for a compassionate, caring, humane and just society. It is always worth coming back to that.

What is at issue is how that can be best achieved in legislation in this particularly complex and sensitive area in medical practice. As Bishop Jones pointed out, we have to keep coming back to the fact that life-saving treatment for women in pregnancy is available at the moment, and the Catholic ethical position has no opposition to that.

However, to come back to the specific questions and to supplement some of the responses Bishop Jones has given, on the issue of the two previous referenda to overturn the inclusion of suicide, the Oireachtas all-party committee of 2000 looked at the 1992 referendum in terms of a response to the X case, and it acknowledged that the 1992 referendum was incredibly confused and that people on both sides of the argument voted to defeat the referendum. It was not a clear - to use the shorthand - pro-choice or pro-life result. Similarly, as we all know because it is an easier one, in the defeat of the 2002 referendum the margin was extremely tight and there was evidence that large numbers of pro-life people voted to defeat it as well.

Beyond all of that, I suggest there is a reason we hold our judges and courts, in particular the Supreme Court, in the highest esteem and we treat seriously and very gravely any judgment that they give. However, we do not have judges and lawyers running the country, or, indeed, framing legislation. That is the responsibility of the Members here, a responsibility that, as churches, we respect and seek to assist in terms of, as we have been invited to do, offering our views. In that regard, however, the Members here are free, as legislators, to consider the wider issues.

The Supreme Court looked only at the legal issue and evaluated the situation in terms of law. As Bishop Jones pointed out in his opening presentation, there are psychiatric developments that need to be now taken into account and there are moral issues, in particular the inability to equate the possible but not certain and preventable death of someone in suicide, as opposed to the certain death of a child. Our response to that is to ask, in the 21st century, what reflects a compassionate, humane and intelligent society. Is it not that we provide the best possible care and support to help someone to make a life-affirming decision?

Finally, for the record, in response to Deputy Conway, no one from the Catholic Church has ever said in any official role or responsibility, or in any statement, that we believe women will somehow try to mislead. We have never said that. The jeopardy arises from the experience in other jurisdictions which are trying to legislate in this area in that there is a real danger of sincerely unintended consequences, as well as the difficulty of simply trying to limit legislation in the context of the breadth of the X case judgment. Any attempt to limit in principle could be challenged. That is why I would suggest trying to address the legitimate concern to ensure that doctors, for example, can act freely in the ethical way we have described and that they currently do - with the protection of guidelines, by the way, and they are not in jeopardy if they follow the guidelines. If greater reassurance is required in that regard, then-----