Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to comment on this proposed legislation. Like many other people I was somewhat confused by the litany of speakers on the opposite side of the House who made the same comments and spoke with the same degree of conviction until I discovered that the speeches were written by the same scriptwriter. I should not have been confused because all the contributions were based on the thinking of the same person.

Before this debate came to the House some comments were made outside it. I always thought the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, who is present in the House and for whom I have had tremendous respect over the years, was a fair-minded man and free to comment at all times on many issues. However, he plumbed a new low in this debate and predicted the way the debate would go in the future, when he made the reference, injudicious as it was, to the effect that if one was a racist, one should vote "No". I hope the Minister withdraws that remark, although I am sure it was not intended the way it sounded, because it was gratuitously insulting to this House and the people of Ireland. I am sure the Minister never intended it that way.

I thought about what would happen in days of yore when the former leader of the Progressive Democrats was a member of this House. I wonder how he would have reacted to that type of remark or to the legislation before us. Would he have agreed to put this referendum to the people at the same time as the local and European elections and govern by decree? I am certain he would not. He repeatedly said in this House he would stand by the Republic and do what he felt the people would like him to do, and he would have been right.

I am sorry to see on this occasion that the Minister, for whom I have great respect, has found himself buried deep in the formidable bosom of Fianna Fáil. Having done its research, it decided the best way to win the local and European elections, or to salvage what it can from these elections, was to introduce something with which the people would latently agree, or perhaps blatantly agree with at a later stage. This is a sad development in our political history. It is the first time I can recall issues have been debated in this House in such a fashion and with such an objective.

I listened with interest this morning to the masters of two maternity hospitals in this city. Deputy Gay Mitchell and a number of other Members of this House repeatedly sought information as to the number of non-national births allegedly clogging up the maternity services in this country and were refused the information. Deputy Mitchell had to leave the House a little more than two weeks ago when he pursued that question for the third or fourth time. Suddenly and mysteriously, the same information appeared in the media because the Government now proposes to govern by decree, to take the information outside the House and away from Members of Parliament and engage directly with the media to bring on board more power to its elbow. This is a sad development.

Listening to the radio this morning, we discovered what really happened. Contrary to what we were told previously, the Minister for Health and Children was approached by the people in the maternity hospitals and asked to provide extra resources to ensure the services could continue. It has been suggested over a number of years that waiting lists for maternity services would be introduced. It now transpires — this is the worrying aspect — that the Department of Health and Children suggested the hospitals should approach the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform. Does this mean that in the future if someone presents at a hospital with a headache he or she will be referred to the local Garda station? Does it mean that if someone presents at one of our hospitals for elective surgery he or she will be referred to the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, the local Garda station, the local chief superintendent, the superintendent or the local sergeant? Where in Heaven's name are we going? This is where the seeds of this urgency have arisen, namely, a failure to deliver hospital services. It is just another smokescreen. The Minister for Health and Children arrived in the House yesterday and began to add his version to the debate. Given its origins, he should be ashamed to walk into the House and attempt to speak on the legislation.

I have listened with considerable interest to a number of people who say the public support the legislation. If someone who says in the local pub or wherever that he or she is in favour of the legislation is asked what it is, he or she cannot quantify it, which is interesting. Reference has been made to other European countries with a less liberal history than this one over the last 60 years or so. The development now taking place is extremely dangerous. I sincerely hope we do not live to regret what we are doing.

I and every other Member of the House must have personal experience of economic emigration and relatives being forced to leave their native country. My father, mother, uncles, aunts, grandparents and their grandparents had to leave this country at various times in the history of the State to seek an existence in a foreign land. It is interesting to hear creeping into speeches again and again throughout the country, and during one or two speeches in this House, that the reason people are coming to this country is because we are economically viable and it is a good place to be. When this was not the case, we were very pleased to have somewhere to go. We were very pleased also that no one popped up during election time with proposals of this nature to exclude us from their shores. It is an extremely dangerous route to go and we will pay a heavy and high price for it.

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