Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to tell the Taoiseach a story. I wish it was not a true story but it is. Two sisters were both pregnant and happily looking forward to the birth of their children. Tragically, towards the end of the first sister's uneventful pregnancy, the baby died in the womb. She was medically assisted in delivering him, the family buried him and mourned him. The second sister received a diagnosis that the foetus she was carrying had a condition of fatal foetal abnormality incompatible with life. She wrote to me in the days that followed:

I do not want to terminate my baby’s life but he does not have one. A heartbeat does not equate to an independent life for my boy, it only confirms a short few hours of pain for him and a lifetime of it for us. I have watched what my sister went through, the amount of support she was offered and the support she will require over the coming months. I feel so angry that this support is not available to me. I have also watched my parents anguish, particularly my mother’s, as they take note of all this and know that their other daughter has this ahead of her without that much needed support, hundreds of miles away from family and friends. The dignity shown to the tiny corpse of my nephew in the hospital, in the mortuary and on his first and final journey home will not be extended to my son as he will have to be locked in the boot of the car on a ferry journey back across the Irish Sea or his ashes delivered by a courier weeks later, along with Amazon and eBay purchases.

This is the Taoiseach's Ireland. These events happened in the weeks after he last voted down our fatal foetal abnormalities Bill. In anybody's book it is cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. The Government has appeared in front of international human rights bodies on four occasions since and has been instructed to deal with these matters but the Taoiseach has done nothing. In the case taken by Amanda Mellet, UN human rights experts stated that not only did Ireland violate her human rights, but the lack of action aggravated her suffering. The Taoiseach comes to the House and speaks about a citizens' assembly reporting to an Oireachtas committee, which means that it will be at least 2018 before any proposals will be before the people to remedy this, condemning hundreds of others to the torture which was experienced by Amanda Mellet. The Taoiseach hides behind the advice-----

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