Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Yes. The Minister responded to members' points and I am responding to his point. He is completely wrong. If the Supreme Court thought it sufficiently important to put in that qualification to explain what was meant by a real and substantial risk to the life of the woman, namely, that it did not have to be inevitable or immediate, why in this legislation is the Minister second-guessing what the Supreme Court stated? How can the Minister sustain an argument that it is superfluous? Is he suggesting that the Supreme Court's inclusion of that important qualification was superfluous because clearly, it was not? It was extremely pertinent to its decision in the X case that the threat need not be inevitable or immediate. Consequently, it appears to me as though the Minister is tightening the definition in this legislation in an unacceptable way, which ultimately could put at risk the lives of women where there is a real and substantial threat but where that threat is not deemed to be inevitable or immediate.