Professor Fiona de Londras:

The negative provision that I propose would mean that the Oireachtas may legislate. It would not necessarily mean that the Oireachtas must legislate. It would leave that decision to the Oireachtas, I think. If legislation or draft legislation were published in advance of a referendum, even if it were not entrenched, there is a possibility that the Oireachtas would consider itself bound not to go beyond what it considers the people understood to be the likely legislative position. Whether it would do that or for how long that would pertain is a matter for these Houses and for politics.

There are two points on the balance of power and supermajorities which are related. Even if, as Deputy Browne has suggested, there were some kind of coalition discussion where a red line on abortion legislation were proposed, the basic democratic safeguard of removability would always exist. Therefore, if the people did not like it, they would not return those people in the following election. Applying a supermajority would depend on whether the Members of these Houses consider this to be a topic that is in some ways so exceptional that it cannot be dealt with through the ordinary legislative process and that it is somehow different from other decisions that have implications for life and death that are taken every day on budgets, for example, in the Houses.