Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Today, on a whole number of fronts, new politics looks decidedly old. Let us be honest: women's reproductive rights are essentially being sacrificed in a political game tonight. That is what this is - a game so that people who oppose this Bill can pretend they do not. It is pathetic and it is never the way this House has done business. It sets an incredibly dangerous precedent, which has already been replicated in the case of the fracking Bill. People are elected to this House to make decisions. The Government should make a decision, stand by that decision and man up.

The manoeuvring on the Government benches today was disgraceful. Here we are, in essence, with another Irish solution to an Irish problem, another monument to our hypocrisy on this issue. I think people have reached a turning point and have got to the stage of no more.

I probably moved the first of these types of Bills, but I am very glad that this will probably be the last one because a repeal of the eighth amendment will be delivered, probably not because of this Government but most definitely in spite of it. Ordinary citizens, young and old, have demonstrated time and again that they are not prepared to continue imposing extra hardship, extra stigma and extra financial strain on women with crisis pregnancies, forcing them to go to the extra expense of travelling, leaving behind their support network, sometimes being too sick to travel, having later abortions with more stress, leaving their children behind and organising for the remains of a much-wanted child to be brought home in the boot of a car. All this is done simply to preserve the lie that there are no Irish abortions.

Of course, there are Irish abortions and they are pretty much the same as the abortions that go on in every other country. One in ten Irish women, including many people in this House, serving Deputies, staff, their sisters, mothers and partners have all had abortions. Pretending that is not the case is the modern version of the mentality that said, "There's no sex on in Ireland, so lock up your women behind the walls of the Magdalen laundries". That attitude has no place in a modern Ireland where tolerance, compassion and kindness are the bywords of people who recognise that it is not a black-and-white issue and the best people to make the decision in those not-black-and-white circumstances are the women who are faced with that decision.

Abortion is a normal part of the reproductive lives of women the world over and is a normal part of the reproductive lives of Irish women. For God's sake, let us end the hypocrisy and get rid of the amendment. Why do we need to put in restrictions? Our abortion regime is effectively governed by the 1967 British Act so we might as well bring that here in any event.

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