Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I support Deputy Catherine Murphy and others on the bodies that came before us. Bodies like the World Health Organization, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and the Irish College of General Practitioners have status as representative bodies or, in the case of the commission, through statute. They are not there on any side of an argument. They are there because of who they are and what they represent. I agree that the balance presented is untrue. However, I also share Deputy Rabbitte's concern on those people who have withdrawn and not come before us. One of the reasons is that they have misinterpreted the decision we made on not retaining Article 40.3.3^oas it is. All that was doing was to say we would move on; in other words, that the status quowould not remain. If the status quohad remained, we would not have been making any recommendation for a referendum and there would have been no point moving to the next stage. That point was made earlier.

It might be no harm to go back to these people to say they have misunderstood what the committee has decided so far. I would like to have the opportunity to ask questions of those groups. I regret very much the deliberate attempt to misrepresent the committee in the public arena. What has been said about what the committee has been trying to do is not true. I do not know if it is worth contacting those groups again to tell them they have misunderstood the committee and the people who have come before the committee.