Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the four professional consultants for their presentations. I feel I learned much more in this session than in the earlier one on the actual delivery of the safe care for mothers and their babies. I got a much better sense of conversation and real meaning about the whole issue.

We are here to discuss the heads of the Bill. That derives from the difficulty that there is in applying the Constitution’s Article of the equivalence of life when it arises in difficult and rather rare circumstances, namely, the threat to the life of a mother. As Dr. John Monaghan pointed out, there was the particular case of the X case on which the Supreme Court made a majority decision - not a unanimous one - in terms of its understanding based on what had been presented to it which was only a limited picture. The court got a psychologist’s report, not one from a psychiatrist or a body of psychiatrists. The court was painted into a corner and had to determine for one case.

We have to be honest about this and decide how we want to express the intention in law as to what is the meaning of the Constitution in its application and what is guided by guidelines from professionals. One point that has come out in this and the last session is that guidelines are delivering excellent care for mother and child. There have been little setbacks here and there which have been accidental and unfortunate, as well as being very tragic for the families involved. For everyone’s wife, mother, sister or daughter who is expecting a baby, everything - the whole fire brigade of medicine - will be brought to bear in saving that mother’s life. Being honest about it, the expression of the Constitution in its simple English is followed by the fact that the life of the mother is of paramount importance at all times, the profession has a duty of care to that mother at all times and that it will use the best guidelines within its professional specialties at all times to deliver that.

We come back to what even Dr. Boylan spoke about, that is, trust. Dr. Monaghan spoke about that. We have got to trust people. We trusted our mothers not to drop us when they put us in our prams. We trust those around us. Today there has been the hijacking of a few set backs to lead us down various long paths of complication and multi-word argument and discussion and we are getting away from the truth.