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

Okay. I submitted a question on the same subject of the referendum. I will add to the Taoiseach's pain with a pile of other questions. I am wondering about the selection process of 99 citizens. Any reputable polling company would never conduct a selection of 100 people. It would rather have 1,000 people as it is much more representative of the population. I want the Taoiseach to tease out further how this was done.

Will the Taoiseach give us the name of the polling company? Is the Taoiseach saying the polling company chose the 99 people in a stratified way or was it done randomly? In other words, did it go through a scientific research process involving social class, age, religion, gender and even a history of crisis pregnancies, which is a criterion for anybody making a judgment on the future of women with crisis pregnancies in this country? Has the said polling company, whatever it is, collected data on attitudes on religion, sexuality or reproductive rights? The country should know its history and background.

If the Taoiseach is telling us this will report before the first half of 2017, which I assume is some time before June 2017, we are looking at up to nine months for it to come back with a recommendation on whether to have a referendum on repealing the eighth amendment. I assume that is what will be done and either we will have a referendum or we will not. We are not getting it any other way. Does the Taoiseach realise that by June 2017, another 3,246 women will have been exported from this country for a health procedure that they are not entitled to here? That is a lot of women.

I attended the march of more than 30,000 mainly young people and it was a much more representative cross-section of society and of where we should be going with the issue. It was a genuine citizens' assembly, as opposed to 99 people who are either selected at random or in a stratified way.

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