John Halligan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is important in this debate in the media and on social media to note that this has nothing to do with the protection of life as there are some lives that cannot be saved. As we speak here over the next couple of days, some mothers and their partners or their husbands will get terrible news. The news may be that a child or the foetus has trisomy 13 or cystic hygroma, which is foetal chromosomal abnormality, which means that the baby will die in the uterus or die just after birth or that the woman will have a miscarriage. We are saying to those women that they must go through with that and that if they do not, they should leave the country and go to Liverpool or Manchester. That is exactly what we are saying. The majority of people who are saying that are not even female. They are men. They are all men in the church. The majority in this House are men, as has been seen over recent years. This is unacceptable. This is personal to the individual woman.

It is unacceptable and unthinkable to allow complete strangers, individually or collectively, or legislators to make such personal decisions for a woman. This is what it comes down to. I cannot take responsibility for this statement - a woman made it to me.

The time has come to face up to reality. We cannot continually export the country's problems. I do not know whether the Bill is anti-constitutional, and I do not care. I care about the women tomorrow, next week and the week after who will have to get on an aeroplane or ship to Liverpool, Manchester or Newcastle and, as has happened, bring a foetus back in a box in the back of a car. This is Ireland in 2016, not 1920. We cannot continue allowing this to happen. Year after year, we find excuses, legal or otherwise, to prohibit women from leaving the country. People should read the issue of The Irish Times that showed an image of Ireland surrounded by a barbed wire fence and a woman on a ladder trying to get out. This is 2016 and that can no longer be allowed. The time has come for people to stand their ground on this issue. We must do so for the thousands of women who will be affected in the coming years and for the women who cannot wait another six months, year or two years. I have not even begun to discuss women who have been violated and raped. We tell them to go through with the nine months and have their children whether they like it or not. That we allow this to happen in 2016 is unacceptable.

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