John Halligan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

On 29 November, a 32 year old woman called Anna Marie left Waterford, driving alone to Dublin and then flying to London. There she was picked up by a mini-bus with eight other women in the vehicle. She told me that the eight others were all aged 17 to 19, some of whom were vomiting and weeping. She said that what frightened her most was the silence on that mini-bus as they were taken to the clinic, where nobody spoke, as well as the isolation and the loneliness. By the way, they had to make the same journey all the way back home and she had to drive down to Waterford. The woman is in a terrible state. She was to be here today, but I am not too sure if she is.

I believe the Taoiseach to be a man of compassion and I have never said otherwise. Would he allow this to happen to his own daughter? I do not know if he has a daughter. Would anybody here in the Dáil allow it to happen? Would the Taoiseach like to see his own daughter, in the emptiness and loneliness of a terribly frightening situation, having to leave her own country? I have three daughters and I would not like to see any of them having to go.

Very many young women do not tell their parents or friends - they go on their own. It is not the procedure that does the psychological damage to them. Believe it or not, all the indications are that it is the fact of having to make that journey on their own that does so. None of us should be sitting comfortably knowing that today a mini-bus is leaving Glasgow or London to take nine or ten such women to clinics, some of them as young as 17 or 18.

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