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

It is extremely disappointing for the Minister of State to make that charge. The simple reason we brought it up is because families affected by this question asked us to. We chose not to say “No” because we believe they have an unanswerable case for the issue that has affected them to be dealt with. It is as simple as that. I also have personal experience of it and so I understood and sympathised with what they went through.

I understand Deputy Healy Rae’s ignorance of this issue, as many people do not fully understand what these conditions are. It is not about illness, disease or an infection but about the genetic building blocks of life not being constituted properly such that life can be sustained. It is a hard concept to get one’s head around when that diagnosis is delivered. One cannot believe that the baby that one wants will not live. It takes quite a while to understand that. When one does, one understands how terrible it is and that no one should be made suffer unnecessarily more as a result. I do not fully accept what the Minister of State said but I accept he believes it. There are other people with legal expertise who dispute what he has said.

That needs to be debated properly and the argument needs to be taken seriously.

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