Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I will when I am ready. I will not hold up the House. I know what the Minister is trying to do but I also know that it means something different. I was a Member of this House when the first pro-life amendment was passed. We were going to defend this nation against abortion. However, that section of the Constitution ultimately resulted in the legalisation of abortion. One cannot have such faith in how the courts will interpret something.

Judges are sensible and if somebody was charged with this, they would probably send them home with a slap on the hand. However, the Minister cannot convincingly say that situations in which teenagers could be found are not illegal under this section. That is what bothers me. It is not the biggest issue in the world, but to a degree, it reflects our age and the peculiar way we have of looking at teenagers.