Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

Honesty in politics is important and so I will not engage in fake backslapping. I congratulate the Taoiseach on writing his own speech, which I believe he did. I was a bit bemused at him mentioning Michael Davitt, a revolutionary and socialist, but we will leave that aside.

In summing up the Taoiseach's legacy, I could focus on six years of unprecedented austerity suffered by the many to bail out the few, the massive homeless and health crisis he is leaving in his wake, or indeed the crisis in the Garda and in the State. However, in the short time I have and on the day that is in it, I will pick one issue that sums up completely the type of Ireland that the Taoiseach and the establishment he has so ably represented bequeathed in his five decades in the Dáil. I refer to the incarceration, internment and imprisonment of a vulnerable pregnant teenager who asked for an abortion and asked for help. Although we know little of the circumstances, we do know that a pregnant child should not be forced to have a child. A pregnant child in legal terms is a raped child.

A pregnant person best knows how she feels about being pregnant. People around the country are comparing this outrage to an episode of A Handmaid's Tale.

Twenty-five years ago this nation rose up at the incarceration of a teenage rape victim but it is still happening under the Taoiseach's watch because he did nothing to make sure it would not happen again. Under the much-heralded Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act, about which the Taoiseach and the Labour Party boast, it has proven impossible for any suicidal person to access an abortion because women are put through an inquisition, their feelings are ignored and their rights to bodily and mental autonomy are completely ignored. This event happened last year. We do not know what happened to this girl, whether she succeeded in getting an abortion or if she was forced to remain pregnant. We have a history, which has been mentioned today, of incarcerating pregnant women and girls. We thought that era was over but many people have been outraged by what they found out in the past 24 hours, namely, that a psychiatrist would have the power, with his or her own views, to section a girl for the crime of wanting not to be pregnant. It seems it is an illness warranting being locked up to want an abortion. Not alone that, but it appears a judge heard and adjudicated upon this case and awarded a guardian to the girl and - wait for it -her foetus.

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