Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Let us not hear all this whingeing around the place that we are going to hold up this legislation in some way.

There has been a lot of debate here in respect of the amendments. They are issues for Committee and Report Stages. We can deal with them one by one. There is one interesting amendment that caught my eye. The Bill uses the term "pregnant woman" and says that "woman" means a female person. This seems to be a strange term to use in view of the fact that we have various genders and transgenders and so on. The Minister should correct that because it is out of line with other legislation we have brought in. It is unnecessary terminology in the circumstances. It goes against a European court ruling that allows people to be recognised by their gender and whatever. I happened to be the Minister with responsibility for social protection when we started to deal with the European court judgment and I instructed that the legislation be prepared.

Our maternity services have been at stretching point for a number of years. We saw some terrible things happen as a consequence. The public deserves very caring, well-funded maternity and obstetrics care. We have seen recently in another scandal in the treatment of women's health how important that is. If there was €12 million there all along, it is deeply regrettable that it was not made available three, four or five years ago to deal with all of the challenges faced in the maternity hospitals, including the maternity hospital in Galway. I hope this Bill will not add to the crisis levels that seem to arise regularly in our maternity hospitals as a result of pressure on them. I also hope the Minister will make resources available for those who need either obstetric or gynaecological care, which are so important.

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