Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome all the women, their family members and their advocates who are in the Visitors Gallery. I also commend my colleague and friend, Deputy Ó Caoláin, on introducing this Private Members' Bill. I was also about to welcome the fact that the Government is supporting the Bill and then I heard what the Minister of State had to say, which rang an alarm bell with me. Whatever about the detail of the Bill and the flaws that the Government perceives in it, let us speak with one voice in this House in saying this evening that the victims of symphysiotomy have been wronged on the watch of the State and that they will have their justice. Let us say that very clearly and let us not leave this debate with any shadow of doubt over the intention of Government.

It is important to acknowledge that many women, who experienced this harrowing procedure, are no longer with us. My thoughts are with them. Deputy Ó Caoláin's Bill simply asks that the Statute of Limitations be lifted for a period of a year to allow these women to pursue justice through the courts. This is a method that has been used for other victims of State neglect and violence on the State's watch. These women should not be treated any differently. I wish that the justice they so richly deserve had been delivered a very long time ago. I commend them on their tenacity, courage and strength. I also note that it took that courage, tenacity and strength to get us to this point, which says something pretty fundamental about us as a society and as legislators.

As a mother, I cannot comprehend how any medical practitioner in any decade could damage a woman's body in such a brutal manner. The birth of a child is such a precious experience, but for that experience to be violated by restraining a woman, as her pelvis is severed with a surgical saw is incomprehensible to me. Yet this happened. Pelvises were broken; sometimes the women were conscious and sometimes they were not. This was done to 1,500 women without their consent over a 50 year period. As we know, many women having had this so-called procedure were discharged from the hospitals not even aware of what had happened to them. Yet they lived with the resultant disability, illness and trauma for their entire lives.

Last year a Supreme Court judgment found in favour of Ms Olivia Kearney, a symphysiotomy survivor. As we know, Olivia had given birth to her only son by caesarean section when she was just 18. Mr. Justice John MacMenamin described it as unfathomable by today's standards.

He went on to state it was unfathomable, even by the standards of 1969, which as it happens is the year I was born. Olivia did not know she had had the procedure and she lived for 33 years in chronic pain and with no answers. To all legislators gathered here, I state that the fight for gender equality today is informed by past injustices such as these, perpetrated against women by a conservative and misogynistic State which believed women's sole purpose was limited to the home and to the bearing and rearing of children, a State which relegated us to being second-class citizens. We are not second-class citizens. We are equal citizens. The victims of symphysiotomy must be given their justice. Delay is not an option and should not happen. To argue the toss on legal technicalities would be a deeply cynical move. It is incumbent on every Member of the Dáil and Seanad to ensure this legislation is enacted as a matter of urgency so all of these brave women and their families receive the justice for which they have fought so hard. Anything less would raise the most fundamental questions about us as a democratic assembly and legislators and about the Government.

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