Alex White (Dublin South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

-----because the plain meaning of a gestational limit must mean that the test of a real and substantial risk goes out the window after it is reached. How could the Deputy be wrong on that? It is manifestly against the intention of the legislation to introduce such limits. They would undermine the legislation and change the meaning, giving a right with one hand and taking it back with the other. The right would be given up to a particular gestational limit and taken away after the limit is reached. That is not acceptable to the Government.

I refer to the immediate and inevitable issue raised by Deputy Boyd Barrett. The Attorney General in the X case said that the test should be that the risk had to be real, immediate and inevitable and he lost that case. The Supreme Court said "No" and said there has to be a real and substantial risk. The court disagreed with the Attorney General that the risk had to be immediate or inevitable. We discussed obiter dictum with the Minister of State, Deputy Creighton. There is no necessity to put something like that, which does not apply, into the body of the legislation. That is why the Minister correctly used the word "superfluous". It is not necessary because the risk does not have to be immediate and inevitable. Even if one does not accept that, one is then entering into a situation where if those words are inserted in the legislation, they would have to be defined. One could not just say "immediate and inevitable". They would have to be included in the definitions section and doctors in a clinical environment would have to be told what constitutes something inevitable and what constitutes something immediate. We do not know what would arise in a clinical environment as how to precise the definitions should be. One cannot prescribe to doctors and the clinical world what precisely is immediate or inevitable because human life and the clinical environment, in particular, especially in the situations we are dealing with under this legislation, are not certain and doctors have to have the ability to act within their professional judgment to determine the question of risk. Everything is raised in good faith and I acknowledge this has been raised in good faith by the Deputy. However, I appeal to him to recognise that it is not necessary and potentially harmful to the legislation.

See this speech in context