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

I am not trying to correct the Minister, and while it is true there have not previously been safe access zones, it is only recently there has been access to abortion in this country, which gives rise to the protests that are happening outside providers, whether they are hospitals, clinics, GP services or whatever.

There has, however, for a long time been an amendment to the Electoral Act. In just my personal experience, there is a zone around a polling station that persons cannot go beyond to distribute leaflets encouraging people to vote for candidates. People have crossed those boundaries in the past, inadvertently in most cases, given they are ordinary, decent local residents who have wanted to support a candidate, and I am speaking only about my own case where they have been looking to support me. They would have been stopped by a garda at the Ballyfermot Civic Centre and told to get out because they were too close. Later that evening, they might have been at the De La Salle school and again not realised they were within the restricted area, and they would then have been told by the garda they were warned earlier.

There must be informal ways, therefore, for members of the Garda discuss these issues with one another. They could certainly create a WhatsApp group for safe access zones whereby a Garda member could say they had warned Joe Bloggs or Mr. X in Kerry and that he turned up again in Cork. These people do that and are already doing it, but we have the experience of implementing zones that cannot be entered. It applies to elections, and all we are asking is that we do it for women's health, their right to access health and the right of people to deliver that healthcare without being intimidated.

As regards the Minister's comment about a Minister for Health not being able to instruct the Garda, amendment No. 3 refers to "following consultation with the Minister for Justice", whom the Minister for Health could consult to ask whether he or she will tell the Garda that it needs to set up a WhatsApp group to identify the roaming protesters who are breaking the law in order that we would know they have been forewarned and yet continue to do it. I can see this happening. The Minister probably cannot, but these are mobile protests that move around rural Ireland in particular, with the same people on them.

I appreciate the Minister talking about putting in a mechanism for review, and I hope he will accept an amendment to the effect that the review will be as short as possible.

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