Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I want to reply to the Minister because he said at the outset the Bill was necessary because time is of the essence and people are very sick and need access and things to move along. Why, therefore, did he not listen to the women and their representative organisation, the 221+ group, when they made the point to him that eligibility criteria to gain access to the tribunal must be extended for it to be real? If it is not, the Minister is excluding around 300 women from access to the tribunal. That is why there are so many cases waiting in the High Court. If the Minister believes we can sit around and wait to see what happens at the tribunal in the belief the eligibility criteria may need to be extended and, if they do, legislation can be brought to the House, he is making a negative case for himself. If the Bill is about time sensitivity, let us expand the eligibility criteria now and give the women access to the decent, proper, fully representative tribunal they have asked the Minister for. It is not as if he has not had negotiations with the representative group. It is very much representative of most of the women affected but it was not listened to. It is not as if the argument has not been heard. It has been heard by the Cabinet, including the Minister, by all sorts of people the group has appealed to and written to, and in negotiations the group has had to walk away from because it was so frustrated.

Where will this end up? Will it end up with a tribunal that will take years and years, after which we will all be scratching our heads saying we should have extended the eligibility criteria to include dependent children and spouses and that we may have been wrong? The Bill does not represent time-sensitive behaviour of a Minister. If the Minister believes the matter is time sensitive, he should behave accordingly and introduce the measures now rather than wait to hear the response of the women. He knows what it is. They have already told him.

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