Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will be brief.

Doctors were asking me, my Department and our clinical advisers whether a baby was viable if it was technically possible to keep a foetus, a baby, alive on some form of equipment or machinery for a very long time. That opens a Pandora's box. Doctors understand very much, as we do, what we mean when we speak about viability and a fatal foetal abnormality. Clearly, we must get the wording right in our legislation and clinical guidelines. We know what we mean. We are asking if the baby can live for a decent period after birth. That is what we are trying to get at. Doctors were asking whether a baby was viable if they went through extraordinary life-supporting measures, with machinery and equipment being used forever to technically keep a foetus, a baby, alive. Perhaps we have not got it right and I know that there is concern about it. We are trying to say that if a doctor has to take extraordinary life-supporting measures to prove and sustain viability, it is not viability. Nobody believes it equates to viability.