Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

As somebody like Deputy Burton who believes in equality, I will take about seven minutes. Is that all right?

I cannot believe some of what I hear in this House. I will give my impressions of what has happened tonight. Deputies may remember an episode of "Fawlty Towers" where Basil argues with German people and says, "Don't mention the war". He eventually says, "You started it; you invaded Poland". This is exactly what this is like. "Don't mention the war" is not in it because we now have this, plus all the amendments that cover everything, including the issue of an ageing population, whom the last Government lashed into by cutting the fuel allowance and the phone allowance. The previous Fianna Fáil and Green Party Government cut their medical cards and the Government before that made them work an extra three years. This Government is about to close their post offices.

The citizens' assembly will also discuss fixed-term parliaments, which means that if Deputies do not survive this term, they may have to fix their arrangements between parties rather than going before the people in an election. The Green Party wants to bring in climate change. Sinn Féin wants to bring in political reform, Brexit, the Good Friday Agreement and Irish unity.

The elephant in the room is the eighth amendment. That is why we are discussing this citizens' assembly and yet it is not being treated with the seriousness and urgency it deserves. When we ignore mentioning the eighth amendment, we are ignoring our history. We are ignoring Savita Halappanavar - who will not get to vote in any of these referendums - Miss X, Miss Y, Miss C, the 12 women who travel abroad every day and the countless young women - we are not sure how many - who wait for the postman or postwoman every morning to deliver a package that contains an abortion pill, risking being sentenced to 14 years on prison, courtesy of the last Government. It was a sentence inserted om the last legislation on the area, for which the Labour Party voted. Let us do away with all the hypocrisy and all the lies, and let us get the record straight.

I did not snigger at Deputy Mattie McGrath earlier, but I laughed at the language he used such as a "free for all". He seemed to believe if the people decided in a referendum to repeal the eighth amendment, we would be going into shops and saying, "I'll have that one, that one and that one", in other words abortion on demand. It entirely misunderstands women's perspective, what goes on in their lives and what their issues are.

Would we seriously, for example, discuss having a citizens' assembly on a procedure that would help men live healthier lives, give them freedom of choice and probably even stop them from losing their lives? No, we would not. Even if we were to discuss it, would we throw in Brexit, the North, CO2 emissions, the whole nine yards? No, we would not. What we are doing here is penalising women again and denying them bodily autonomy.

I lived through 33 years of the eighth amendment having campaigned against it. An entire generation of women and young men have not had a say in this and they are very anxious to have their say. They want to vote on getting rid of the eighth amendment and there may be others who want to vote to keep it. However, we should give them that opportunity. An old one like me has no right to deny future generations that right, nor do most people in this House who are my age and older, and indeed those who are younger. If we trust people, as we did in the referendum on same-sex marriage, we might get a result we do not like or maybe we will get a result we like. However, the point is to give this generation and the one behind it the opportunity to vote.

I will make a comment on the make-up of the citizens' assembly.

If the electoral register is going to be used for a lottery-style random selection of citizens, migrant workers will be excluded. This point has already been made by Deputy Coppinger. I reckon that a whole cohort of people who may ultimately register to vote in a referendum on the repeal of the eighth amendment, but who are not currently registered because they do not believe the system relates to their needs or their futures, will also be excluded. I refer to people who, like the 60,000 people who registered to vote in advance of the referendum on same-sex marriage, feel alienated from the system.

I do not believe this proposal is reflective of society or of the needs of the people of this country. It would certainly serve to hold back women. We have proposed amendment No. 2 to take the elephant out of the room. We want to stop the "Fawlty Towers" phenomenon of trying not to mention the war. We believe that rather than using repulsive methods that involve kicking for touch and getting rid of the issues that really matter to people, the Government should go for the jugular by passing legislation that will allow our citizens to vote on whether they want to repeal the eighth amendment.

As a young woman, I lived through the Ann Lovett case, the Kerry babies case and the case of Sheila Hodgers, who died in Drogheda hospital. We used to say we could not allow such things to happen again, but they have happened again and will happen again unless we deal with this issue. There is an urgency about this. The eighth amendment has been in the Constitution for 33 years. It is not like we are asking to be given another three months to have a conversation. That is what the Minister has said. We think we have had the conversation. People have made up their minds, so we should give them a vote on it.

See this speech in context