Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister being open to amending this legislation. Without meaning to point fingers, or anything like that, this may be some acknowledgement that a bit more time is going to be needed to get this right. I am minded to recall what was said earlier regarding Stephen Teap and Lorraine Walsh. They have said that this legislation does not pass what was referred to as the Vicky test. If it is the case that we are agreed that we can work together, and it was said I do not know how many times during this debate that nobody wants to get this wrong and that we all want to get it right, I am still reminded of the debate on the termination of pregnancy legislation, which the Minister might well remember. We all came under tremendous pressure then to get it done, get it in and do it quickly. Now, we are returning to the legislation to talk about safe access zones. I submitted an amendment on safe access zones which we did not get to and which was not discussed. Indeed, we were pressured by outside organisations, as was the Minister, that quite disgracefully encouraged and urged us and twisted our arms up our collective backs to withdraw amendments we knew were good ones and represented the right thing to do. We are now back again to try to legislate for safe access zones. We need to dispense with the practice of trying to rush Bills through at the end of every year, even if what we are dealing with concerns good and worthwhile projects and everybody wants to get them done.

We need to take time to reflect on this legislation, to get things right and to be mindful of what Lorraine and Stephen are saying concerning what they want, because they have been through this. They are the people, as well as the medical and legal experts, who must be our guiding lights in this process. If we are recognising that a bit more work needs to be done, then this is welcome. Everybody here has, I think, indicated they are willing to work with the Minister. I am very much conscious that we attempted to make amendments to legislation previously and now these amendments have to be revisited. This is happening now, when we could and should have done this earlier and taken the time to get it right.

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