Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

How many times is this House going to find an excuse to delay what is surely the inevitable, the opportunity for citizens of the State to have a say on an issue that has affected so many in the past 30 years? What is happening tonight is that politicians in this House, some of whom only last month marched through the streets of Dublin to call for the holding of a referendum and who have been vocal in the media on the need to hold a referendum on the issue, are ducking the opportunity to provide for the very thing they have sought. It can be parsed any way one wishes, but that is what is happening in this Chamber tonight. There are so many shades of opinion on this issue that it is fair to say very few people are on the same page on it. One thing, however, is clear from poll after poll, that is, that the majority are in favour of holding a referendum to allow the people, not this House, to make a decision on it.

We have had the alphabet soup of women and their families who have been brutalised by the lack of coherence as to what the eighth amendment means for the medical profession in Ireland. A person would need to have been born before 1963 to have had a say on the issue. I was one of the ones who had an opportunity to vote in 1983 and I voted against including the eight amendment in the Constitution. The Constitution is not the place in which to deal with this most sensitive of issues. I remember the debate clearly. There were very extreme views on both sides and the debate was characterised by very narrow legal definitions. In the interim we have seen very real cases that were far from academic. Some were very high profile such as the A, B and C case, the X case, the Y cases and so forth. The Bill before the House is calling for one thing - upholding the right of the people to have a say on the issue. The Social Democrats will be supporting the Bill and urge other politicians who in standing for election promised that that would be the position they would take to take it when they vote on the Bill later in the week.

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