Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the debate on this long-overdue legislation which the Social Democrats will be supporting. I acknowledge the work done by abortion rights campaigners to get us to this point, particularly Together for Safety. Without their tireless campaigning for safe access zones, I believe this legislation would have fallen off this Government's agenda and would have been delayed even further than it has been already. Despite this Government's long-standing commitment to legislate for safe access zones and cross-party support in both Houses of the Oireachtas, progress has been painfully slow. It is now over five years since the then Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, received Cabinet approval for safe access zones. He said it was his intention to bring forward legislation by summer 2019. At the time, in 2018, the then Minister said that legislation was needed to ensure patients and staff were not subjected to intimidation or harassment.

Unfortunately, since then, too many patients and staff have suffered that exact fate. This Bill first appeared in the legislative programme in the spring of 2019 and campaigners hoped it would be expedited to deliver on the Minister's commitment. Instead, however, the Bill languished on legislative programmes for another two years with the note, "work under way". During that period, a new Government was formed and its programme for Government also committed to establishing exclusion zones around medical facilities.

In February 2019, as protests increased, councils began to take matters into their own hands. Louth County Council passed a by-law to prevent protests outside healthcare settings providing terminations. Other councils followed, including in Galway and Limerick. Unfortunately, these by-laws were ineffective and councils were advised that national legislation was, in fact, needed.

In October 2021, while the Government continued to stall, Senators took the lead and introduced a cross-party Private Members' Bill that sought to legislate for safe access zones. This Bill was commissioned and drafted by Together For Safety. Despite passing all Stages in the Seanad by April 2022, this Bill never reached Second Stage in the Dáil. However, it undoubtedly put a fire under the Government and provided officials in the Department of Health with a vital blueprint for the legislation before us today.

In August of last year, the Minister for Health finally published the general scheme of the Health (Termination of Pregnancy Services) (Safe Access Zones) Bill 2023, three years after it was supposed to be legislated for. This was followed by pre-legislative scrutiny at the Joint Committee on Health from October 2022 until April 2023. During pre-legislative scrutiny, it became clear that despite the length of time it had taken the Government to produce the general scheme, it still fell short of what was required in terms of enforcement. This is a matter to which we will return later in this debate.

It is clear from this timeline of events that there has been an absence of political will and courage to legislate in a timely manner. The Minister for Health dragged his heels while patients and staff dealt with the consequences of repeated delays. Between 2019 and 2021, the Abortion Rights Campaign conducted extensive research into patients' experiences of accessing termination services. Its report with Dr. Lorraine Grimes, "Too Many Barriers: Experiences of Abortion in Ireland After Repeal", found that 14% of patients had encountered anti-abortion activity when attending abortion services. Participants in this study recounted "people doing rosaries and saying hurtful things about going to hell and punishment" and "people with coffins outside praying". One respondent said, “There was an anti-choice sign (maybe a picture of a foetus) outside the private ultrasound clinic where I had to go to ensure I was within the 12 weeks.”

In the past five years, protests have been reported all around the country. On 3 January 2019, just two days after termination services were introduced, the first protest was reported outside a GP clinic in Galway. Since then, protests have continued regularly across a number of counties. In Together For Safety's submission to the review of the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018, it stated that there were sustained protests reported outside University Maternity Hospital Limerick and Holles Street hospital. Such protests have not abated. The Minister for Health will be aware of this having received multiple emails from Together For Safety about the situation in Limerick.

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