Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 1:

In page 5, line 5, to delete “human” and substitute “maternal”.

This Bill has become something of a sham. People expected and hoped the Bill would protect the lives of women and prevent tragedies like that of Savita Halappanavar, the tragic circumstances surrounding X, a 14-year-old child who was raped and became suicidal, the tragic circumstances surrounding the A, B and C v. Ireland and D v. Ireland cases. It failed on all counts to live up to the expectations of ordinary people that the Government would prevent such tragic circumstances from happening again. The reason the Bill has failed and the reason I am tabling this amendment, along with 40 others with other Deputies, is because we want the Bill to be what it should be and what people expect it to be, one that ensures a woman's life will never again be put at risk because of the State refusing to safeguard the lives of women and the rights of women.

It is a tragic and sad fact that the Bill, instead of preventing those sort of tragedies and protecting the lives of women, has become about the internal politics of Fine Gael, holding the Government together and preventing political defections. The Bill is a fudge and a sham and the lives of women have become secondary to the needs of the Government to protect itself and prevent a major split in its ranks. That means, with absolute certainty, that we will be here again facing the tragic circumstances that prompted the Bill to be drafted and that prompted this debate. We will be back because the Government has not vindicated the rights of women.

The problems with the Bill begin, as my amendment suggests, with its title and the objective the Bill sets itself. It fudges the key issue, which the Bill is supposed to be about, and it talks about human life when the issue is women's lives. Women's lives have been put at risk because of the legal situation in Ireland and the political cowardice of successive Governments. Women have died and suffered and have been forced to flee in the dead of night under a stigma of criminality and of doing something wrong when they simply wanted to protect their lives, their health and their rights. The Government has vindicated none of those things and instead sought to protect Fine Gael and to assure Fine Gael's political interests. That is a tragedy. After the Bill passes-----

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