Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

One of the things I learned in the last few weeks of the campaign was that compassion is not an exclusive commodity. By its nature, it is open and sharing and it belongs to everyone. The people I met canvassing, mainly young women who had not been involved in politics before and who were energised by the campaign, had such compassion for themselves, their sisters and friends who had been in difficult circumstances. They were determined to get a "Yes" vote, which is what happened. It is a huge reward and achievement.

Sometimes the campaigners heard harsh words from people on the other side, usually, most ironically, from older people. Supposedly, wisdom comes with age but sometimes the campaigners were subjected to harsh words and they decided they would respond by being respectful, not engaging in a real row and by walking away. I hope we continue in that tradition because it brings real strength. Compassion is strong.

Towards the end of the campaign, I met a friend on the "No" side at the bottom of Grafton Street. I believe she had just been crying because she, too, had many hard words said to her from passers-by. I stopped to chat to her. She said to me that, ironically, it was sometimes people in the sharpest suits who had said the hardest words.

I hope we can recognise that there is compassion on every side. I was out at night when posters were being taken down. I saw a chap on the other side of the street - a man with his son in a family saloon taking down posters. It was not big American money or anything like that. They were just ordinary decent Irish people doing what they thought was right. We should recognise them and try to not to see this as a really divisive moment. I do not think it has to be. With regard to any of the priests I have heard or any masses I have attended, and I do go, I have not felt excluded as a "Yes" voter even though I was there last Sunday and I am the representative of the party with the highest "Yes" vote. My parish priest is the same compassionate individual. They do have a belief and we have a belief. Let us remember the Church's teaching that every individual is special. This should not be forgotten, given up or dismissed. I hope we can do that.

I heard what the Taoiseach said the other day. I think we must start looking. What are we doing now? What are we doing for the future? The Taoiseach said, and it was the most important thing he said in my opinion, that we should use this as a moment, and I think we can get agreement on this, to make this the best country in which to raise a family. This is one thing people on the "Yes" and "No" sides have in common. Nobody thinks that having a huge number of abortions is necessarily a good thing so trying to work together to ensure there is an environment where there are fewer crisis pregnancies is surely something on which we can unite, which would be a good thing for this country.

My colleague, Claire Bailey MLA, who has been a great campaigner on this issue, and Deputy Catherine Martin have written to the Minister saying that the first thing we should do in the legislation is provide provisions for women from Northern Ireland to be able to avail of whatever services we provide here. That would be a compassionate approach and a recognition that the UK health system has helped us in times when we turned our back in this House.

Second, we should concentrate on the real things that make it difficult to raise and think about having a child, whatever type of family it is and it should be all different types of family instead of one being better than another. However, someone cannot have any sort of family if they do not have a home. I am sorry. All the words about how great we are now and what a brilliant and compassionate country we now have stick in my craw. It is a slight taste of the new craw thumper world where we talk about brilliant and compassionate we are when we cannot build homes for people. We have an economy that is not about the family. It is all about growth, profit and greed. I would love to see that sort of sense of compassionate revolution and change in terms of what we do so that every pregnancy can, in the words of Nell McCafferty, who was brilliant in this campaign, have that sense of celebration, wonder, excitement and joy. That should be the scale of our response rather than just pat ourselves on the back about how brilliant we are at the moment and talk about what a great country we are. We are a great country. I love this country but we should be slightly careful that we do not lose the run of ourselves and lose compassion for all sides and all people in this country, which is what makes it a great country to live in.

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