Alex White (Dublin South, Labour)
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To the extent that Deputy Clare Daly suggests that we have chosen not to do this in circumstances where we know we could, I reject that. That is not the case. I, too, know persons quite close to me who have been affected by this particular circumstance that members have described here and the humanity of it. So far as I, as a man, can ever understand it, I am aware of exactly what Deputy Boyd Barrett and others have described here in terms of the experiences of people I know.

If I thought that this could be achieved within this legislation, I can assure the committee that I would be pressing hard for it to be done. I do not believe that it can be done. The reason, merely to remind ourselves again, is that when the people put this provision into the Constitution in 1983, they put an enormously effective and restrictive measure into the Constitution which prohibited abortion in practically every circumstance that was imaginable apart from the one with which we are dealing in this legislation which is where there is a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother that can only be averted through a termination. When I say, "effective", it was intended to be restrictive and it has had that effect, save the very restricted circumstances with which we are dealing arising from the X case. It only allows a termination in circumstances, as I have stated, where there is a risk to the life of the mother. That is what the people decided in 1983.

Can I just say, since the issue has been raised and since we are having a frank discussion, I hope that issue is revisited in the future as I hope that clause in the Constitution is revisited. However, in the meantime, I have huge respect for this document, including parts of it that were put in by the people that I did not agree with, but it is in the Constitution and we must uphold it. In particular, members of the Government must uphold it. I would suggest the Oireachtas does as well, irrespective of how troubling it is that we cannot extend the provisions that we are making here to the circumstances that have been so well described by the Deputies, and I do not disagree with them or the strength of the submissions that have been made.

On Deputy Boyd Barrett's point about constitutional certainty, members of Government, Attorneys General and judges, are human beings. They strive to do the best they can. The Minister and the Government are saying that we have done everything. Every aspect of this proposed legislation has been gone through and carefully discussed and considered by the Attorney General as to its constitutionality, but one does not know definitively whether something is constitutional until it is tested by the Supreme Court. It is being advocated here that we should allow the matter to go back to the Supreme Court prior to enacting this legislation, in other words, we should either take a chance that the Supreme Court will say it is all right or pause this process and find some way of getting that issue before the Supreme Court. That is really what is being suggested here. That is not a sustainable argument.

On the point in relation to the European Court of Human Rights and the D case and how that came up in the court, it came up because what was being argued before the court was that the applicant D had not exhausted all her domestic remedies. What the Irish Government was saying in Strasbourg was that she could have a chance of this issue being dealt with in her favour in the Supreme Court and that it is possible, but, as I have stated, we cannot proceed on the basis of something that is possible and that might be decided by the Supreme Court. We cannot do that in legislation, particularly when one looks at how profoundly restrictive is the provision in the Constitution that the people put in there. That is the position with which we must deal. I find it in part very troubling, but we cannot operate on the basis that we ignore what the Constitution says.