David Cullinane (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will start by saying something I do not say very often. I genuinely commend the Minister for Health, the Taoiseach, the rest of the Cabinet and the two Government parties on bringing forward this legislation and the way in which they have handled the debates, both inside and outside the Houses. It is a credit to them. I welcome the opportunity to speak on what is an exceptionally important and pressing issue. More important, I want to go further and suggest that this is perhaps one of the most important issues to come before the House since the foundation of the State.

I say this because the denial of the rights and well-being of Irish women sheds an important light on the dysfunctional nature of our State apparatus. I have spoken before in the House about this country's historical disregard for women and the institutionalisation of their secondary status in virtually every area of life. This year alone, we have witnessed debates and discussions in both Houses and among the general population on the shocking and appalling treatment of Irish women by the State. I refer of course to the treatment of women incarcerated in the Magdalen laundries and the women who were brutally violated by undergoing the procedure known as symphysiotomy. Both of these issues are testament to the often subordinate position of women in Irish society, the patriarchal nature of the State's institutional apparatus and the role of oppression, fear and sometimes violence in maintaining political, socioeconomic and cultural control and dominance. There is no doubt that a tremendous amount of time, effort, work and energy has been expended over many decades since the foundation of the State to ensure women were kept in their so-called place.

Many of the harrowing and deeply disturbing issues we are dealing with today are a legacy of a dreadful and shameful past that is coming back to haunt us. The legislation we are discussing today relates to another of those issues. Successive generations of Irish people knew of the existence of the Magdalen laundries. How could they not, given that these facilities were located in almost every city and county? The fear and shame of pregnancy outside of marriage was omnipresent, as was the depiction of women who exhibited certain traits as wild and dangerous and thus in need of surveillance and incarceration. The Irish State consciously and deliberately enshrined in its law and through its actions and inactions an institutional apparatus which embedded within both State and civil society the secondary status of women. It is worth remembering that this process only began in earnest with the foundation of the State in 1922 and reached its zenith with the endorsement of Éamon de Valera's 1937 Constitution. In the aftermath, women were effectively banished from formal participation in decision-making and in the nation's political and public sphere. In some respects, they still are.

Gone were the aspirations of a Republic which would treat both women and men with equality and a sense of justice and fairness. Instead, in the new Republic, women were treated in an infantile manner and brutally punished with loss of freedom and even loss of life for all types of imagined and invented transgressions. The fact that Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington, Mary MacSwiney, Constance Markievicz, Winifred Carney and many others had fought and died for an Ireland where equality and freedom would be at the core of the new Republic was all but obliterated from the political landscape. The fundamental fact that successive generations of Irish women had by their labour, both paid and unpaid, produced and reproduced key elements of the Irish nation state, namely, the family, a particular Irish way of life, cultural continuity, societal conformity and economic survival, was also airbrushed out of the collective psyche by a conservative male political elite. The truth is that without the work of women in the public and domestic spheres, the Irish State would never have come into being. Irish women were and are actively engaged in a process of nation-building. The story of Irish women and their relationship with the State is in many ways a tragedy characterised by immense human pain and suffering, psychological torture, physical violence, fear and often despair. When we discuss issues to do with women, this is the historical cloth from which contemporary struggles are cut. As much as we may find the connection unsettling, this distorted and one-sided relationship between women and the State continues to shape the lives and futures of all women living in Ireland.

When we come to discuss the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill, there is an onus on us as legislators to be cognisant of the major power imbalance that existed at the heart of the relationship between women and the State. I welcome the Bill, particularly the clarity it will finally provide to the medical profession. I am pro-women and, as such, I am greatly encouraged by recent opinion polls which consistently show overwhelming public support for this legislation. For anybody who has engaged with the evolution of this debate from the early 1980s, it is very clear that Irish society has not suddenly experienced some dramatic change of mind. What has happened, in fact, is a slow realisation, brought about in part by the repeated revelations of institutionalised abuse of women and children and the failure of the State to act against such abuse, that compassion and basic humanity are not always qualities associated with key and important areas of Irish life. This softening in the collective psyche of the nation is to be welcomed. It is a sign of maturity and yet another indication that wider society is far ahead of the political establishment on many important social issues. I genuinely believe the people of Ireland are likewise ahead of us on this issue.

Some of those opposed to this legislation have framed their concerns and objections within a discourse which stresses morality and conscience and covertly suggests that those of us who are in favour of it are not troubled by such matters. Nothing could be further from the truth. Let me state very clearly that I and my party are pro-life and it is this very stance which informs our support for the legislation. Furthermore, this is an issue of conscience for us too. As republicans, we are obliged to acknowledge that the Irish State has failed successive generations of women. If we had chosen not to tackle this issue, as we have been instructed by the Supreme Court to do, we would be following in a long line of legislators and institutions which have failed to bring about equality for women in this State. I do not want to be part of the disempowering of women; I want to be part of empowering women and ensuring they have choices, that their health is protected and that when they use our maternity services, they will have every legal protection, as will the people who provide those services.