Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

In the past five and a half years, as an elected representative in the Dáil, I and my colleagues have supported five Bills that challenged the eighth amendment and the lack of access to abortion for women with diagnoses of fatal foetal abnormalities. Every time we had this debate, we came up against the eighth amendment. The eighth amendment has always been the problem. During the most recent general election campaign, there was a fairly good campaign to repeal the eighth which saw people talking to Deputies about the issue of abortion. Many Deputies say they support repeal of the eighth amendment. I think five in Fine Gael have now come out very clearly in support of repealing the eighth amendment. It is a step forward but the Government still lags behind the mood of the people. The people are way ahead of the Government on this. I heard the point made about the marriage referendum. The people were way ahead of us on that too. There was not any particular group that pushed it. The grannies with young sons and daughters who are gay knew what they needed in their lives. They were way ahead of us. That is why the referendum got so much support. The Minister is way behind on this. His Government is way behind on this.

A RED C poll conducted on behalf of Amnesty International has shown that 55% of people agree that expanding access to abortion should be one of the priority issues for this Government. The people want us to deal with this issue. They do not want us to put a group of individuals in a room to make a decision and come back with some recommendation. I certainly do not want to see anything with a constitutional aspect to it that recommends merely changing the Constitution coming back from the Citizens' Assembly. That would be wrong. It has been wrong all along. I think I have gone over my time so I better conclude.

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