Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

With the agreement of the House I will share my time with Deputy Joan Collins.

We have discussed this issue several times in the past number of weeks and I think the Minister and the Government are trying to present it as a positive that we will have 20 hours of discussion on this topic in the next number of weeks. The reality is that we have had 20 years of waiting for successive Governments to legislate for a woman's legal and constitutional right to an abortion in Ireland where her life is in danger, including from a risk of suicide.

Other Deputies have said it is a scandal that this issue has been ignored for so long, which it is, but I see our discussion in the next number of weeks as a further delaying tactic. Every opinion poll and survey and the outpouring of emotion and discussion in the past number of weeks show that people in Ireland support the provision of lawful abortion where a woman's life is in danger, as they have done in successive referendums. Members of the Government are merely saying they will let us know before Christmas what they are going to do about it, and not that they are actually going to do anything. They will simply tell us what they will do. That is not good enough.

This is not rocket science. It is pretty straightforward. We now have the findings of the fourth expert group and - surprise, surprise - they are not dramatically different from the findings of the many other expert groups, because the reality is quite straightforward.

Comparing the actions of the Minister with the reaction of the British Government to the Leveson inquiry tells an interesting tale. The British Government launched an investigation into cultural practices and the ethics of the press. The inquiry presented a 2,000 page report which was published immediately and the Government made a statement on it within hours.

Here we have an expert group set up, issuing a report with 58 pages with a few pictures and graphs thrown in for good measure that was months late. With weeks to release it, the newspapers got it before the Dáil, and weeks later we have still not had an official response from the Government on what it will do on an issue that is decades old.

That sums up the systematic ignoring of the issue that has gone on over decades. This is an opportunity to blood a few backbenchers, let them get their fears off their chests and appease their constituents, talk to whomever they want and then, in the new year, the Government will whip them into line because everyone knows there must be legislation. There is no way out of it in terms of the European Court or any other basis to fail to act. In that sense, it is regrettable that the Government did not take the opportunity to support our Bill progressing to Committee Stage last week because that gave the basis to frame legislation that we could have amended later on to bring in this most basic of provisions.

As the expert group has said, we are talking about primarily medical decisions that have been caught up in a legal quagmire. Let us be honest - this is the case because of the traditional interference of the Catholic Church in the running of State matters in Ireland. That is why we are in this mess, with the original 1983 referendum and the unwelcome amendment to the Constitution. That is the nub of this. These issues should never have been in the Constitution in the first place; these are private mattes between women and their doctors and there should be no basis for interference here. Many other jurisdictions manage to deal with this simple medical practice by guidelines and medical procedures as they do for many other medical practices. There is no need to get bogged down in difficulties.

The reason we are in difficulty is because of the constitutional situation. As a result of that, we have succeeded in treating women, as the Minister for Justice and Equality said last week, as second class citizens with lesser rights to equality and whose health has been jeopardised. We want to make it clear at the outset that if the Government does not come forward with legislation early in the new year, we will most definitely reintroduce our Bill. I would like to see the Labour Party Members on the backbenches try to weasel their way out of this one if there is no provision for legislation. Basic primary legislation can be added to using ministerial powers. There is no doubt that is the way forward. The dogs on the streets are asking how far we will move forward and if it will represent progress after all this time. How could it be posed as a fundamental breakthrough that women have the right to have their lives protected? The fact we are even debating this is quite insulting.

The tragic circumstances of the death of Savita Halappanavar have put on the agenda the circumstances for many women who find themselves pregnant in this country who have to choose to have an abortion. It has opened the debate up beyond this. It would be interesting to examine the mixing up of canon law in the background debate. The church claims that it fully appreciates a woman's life must be protected and in such an instance where there is a termination, it is not really an abortion, dressing it up as if it does not have a problem. That lie was exposed by stories highlighted in Arizona last week, where a Catholic bishop ex-communicated the head nun in a hospital and decommissioned the hospital as a Catholic hospital because it terminated a pregnancy for lifesaving reasons.

We have all heard the stories in recent weeks told by people who have gone on the airwaves, stories of women who have suffered the trauma of carrying foetuses with fatal abnormalities that they know at any minute could die and who have been driven out of the country at significant cost to march around the streets of Liverpool or Birmingham to have a termination. One woman said that the ashes of her foetus that had been incinerated were sent back to her in a DHL package because they could not deal with that situation over there. She could not acknowledge where she had been and this added further shame and trauma, an indefensible cruelty, as the Minister for Justice and Equality said last week. I agree with him but I do not agree with the way he shrugged his shoulders and said he was sorry there was nothing the Government could do.

There are all sorts of reasons for women to decide to have an abortion - rape, incest, women who are too young or too old. There are Irish abortions - they just do not happen in Ireland. Well over 150,000 Irish women have been through this, thousands every year. The people who have contacted us and who are out on the streets and have spoken in the opinion polls say this hypocrisy must be addressed.

This has touched a nerve. I was contacted by a man from down the country during the week who told me the Savita case reopened old wounds for him and his family. He told me how his mother died in similar circumstances in 1961 in the Coombe hospital, where she bled to death during her seventh pregnancy. This man was six years of age, with sisters and brothers ranging in age from 12 to three. The foetus died and as a result of his mother's death, his four sisters, his brother and himself were taken into the industrial schools because their father could not cope. His brother and him ended up in Artane, and his sisters were sent to Goldenbridge. They spent between five and ten years in those institutions before their father could get them back and try to put the family back together. When they arrived back to the house, they had no change of clothes, no bedding or shoes other than the wellingtons they had on. No one ever checked on them afterwards. This is the legacy of how this State has failed to support families or women. All that man wanted was that one day his story would be put on the record in the Dáil and I want to do that now.

It is unacceptable that we continue to ignore the tragedy and trauma that goes on in life. All that any civilised society can do is try to support its citizens in their decision making and in the difficult choices they must make, including the right to have children, have them safely and raise them in dignity without fear of poverty or stigma. We have a lot to learn. We have come a long way in some ways but in other ways we are stuck back in the years that man and his family had to endure.

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