Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 20 September 2017

Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution

Eighth Amendment of the Constitution: Engagement with Ms Justice Mary Laffoy, Citizens' Assembly

1:30 pm

Ms Justice Mary Laffoy:

Deputy Louise O'Reilly's second question related to the legitimacy of the recommendations. She pointed out that I am relying on what I contend is the robust nature of the process that we went through. That is what I am relying on. It is the robust nature of the process we went through. We worked very hard to ensure that the members were informed and that they understood all of the aspects of the topics that we were concerned with - the legal aspects, the medical aspects and the ethical aspects - and what issues were important. The whole objective was to inform them so that they would be in a position to make the proper decision. That was what I saw as my task as and I hope I fulfilled that task. We worked very hard to do so. If it looks at the amount of material that we have produced, the committee will see how hard we worked. We got some of the best advisers available on that.

Deputy Louise O'Reilly asked also about the ancillary recommendations. The members wanted to give us ancillary recommendations. They wanted to deal with wider policy matters. We encouraged them to do so but we made it absolutely clear to them that those recommendations, not having been voted on, were in a totally different situation to the voted-on recommendations. The committee will see that we picked five. We analysed the transcript, if I may put it that way, and we picked five. I doubt if there is anything controversial about the five. There may be. I do not know. I certainly think that those five - what we decided as ancillary recommendations - reflect what the members wanted the committee to know. It is true to say that they were not voted on and I cannot say that the majority would have voted for each of those ancillary recommendations. However, I can say, and the committee can do the exercise itself, they represent the ancillary recommendations which most frequently appear in the 74 responses we got.

Was there another point that I have missed?

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