Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister for Health, Deputy James Reilly, back to the House. I welcome the opportunity to speak on an important debate.

There are very few issues which have come before the House to which I have given more consideration. Like colleagues across the House, I have had several lengthy and impassioned discussions with people from all sides. I have followed public debates closely over the past weeks and months, listened to the many sincere and genuinely-argued contributions from all sides in the Chamber yesterday and today, in the Dáil over the last couple of weeks and in the media. I paid particular attention to the proceedings of the Joint Committee on Health and Children, which provided a calm and reasoned forum for experts from a range of medical and legal disciplines to present evidence, offer opinions and engage with Members with a view to helping to inform the preparation and drafting of the Bill before us. While the discussions undoubtedly helped many Members to develop a better understanding and appreciation of the issues, perhaps providing them with an improved insight into contrary arguments, the proceedings did not significantly change anyone's mind. Certainly, they did not change the minds of the Taoiseach or the Minister.

Assuming the Taoiseach and the Minister watched the debates, it is difficult to see how they missed the clear evidence of the various psychiatrists who appeared and stated again and again to the committee that abortion is not an appropriate course of action in the treatment of suicidal ideation. The testimony of psychiatrists before the committee was absolutely clear that there is no basis in medical evidence for section 9 of the Bill. As Members of the Minister's party said during the debate in the Dáil, it is clear that the Government has ignored everything the experts had to say and come up with a Bill which owes more to political expediency and power-broking than medical evidence. I am sorry to have to say that. The absolute refusal of the Government to yield to the evidence of these experts and change section 9 of the Bill makes it impossible for me to vote for it here today.

There is much in the Bill which many, including me, on both sides could support. I welcome the clarity the Bill offers to medical professionals and the reassurance it offers women that every necessary treatment can be provided to protect them where there is a real and substantial risk to their lives. Regrettably, the Government, in particular its Fine Gael element, has reneged on pledges contained in the infamous letter Deputy Phil Hogan gave to Fine Gael candidates to show voters across the country before the last election. I am sorry to have to record that Fine Gael has turned its back on everything it promised before the last election regarding abortion. While the Government's legislation is deeply flawed, several Fine Gael Deputies have discovered that it has no intention of offering any leeway or possibility for reconsideration. In passing a Bill that retains section 9 as drafted, we are writing into our Statute Book a law that makes the destruction and killing of one human life legal where it is done in response to the suicidality of another. Generations to come will wonder how we allowed ourselves to pass this law. Contrary to the genuine belief of some that this is an overdue measure needed to bring finality to some aspects of the X case, I have no doubt that a future Dáil and, hopefully, Seanad will have to revisit the issue and unpick the legislative and administrative mess we are about to make.

The Government says it is simply legislating for the X case as it is obliged to do. Nevertheless, a great deal of legal opinion is to the contrary, including the opinions of former Supreme Court judge, Hugh O'Flaherty, and Dr. Maria Cahill, lecturer in constitutional law in University College Cork, who was invited to give evidence to the joint committee on the heads of the Bill. She said in an article published at the end of June:

The legal reality is that there is no obligation on the Government deriving from the Constitution or from the European Court of Human Rights or from the Supreme Court to propose legislation for a suicide-based exemption from the right to life.

That is the opinion of a legal expert who is one of many who are of the same opinion.

More important, are we to ignore and disregard the development of medical practice and experience in the period since the X case and the 2002 referendum? Members in the Dáil pointed out that the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK has amended its guidelines over recent years to take account of the growing body of evidence regarding the increased risks of mental disorders following abortion. Likewise, we must pay careful attention to what the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr. Eamonn Barnes, has said about the Bill. He believes it is unconstitutional because "the foetus gets no chance to have its right to survival advocated". Article 40.3.3^o of the Constitution provides:

The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.

Under this legislation, who will vindicate the life of the unborn, the right of the father and the right of the mother?

Several Members on the Government side are deeply concerned by the legislation but find themselves compelled to support it against their better judgement. In that regard, I welcome Deputy Peter Mathews to the Visitors Gallery and commend him and his four colleagues on standing by their convictions. That is not to condemn anyone who voted differently in the Dáil.

I am grateful for an e-mail I received from Seamus Ó Concubhair in respect of Article 15.10 of the Constitution. The e-mail states:

Article 15.10 of the Constitution states the following:Each House shall make its own rules and standing orders, with power to attach penalties for their infringement, and shall have power to ensure freedom of debate, to protect its official documents and the private papers of its members, and to protect itself and its members against any person or persons interfering with, molesting or attempting to corrupt its members in the exercise of their duties.Legislators are elected and deputed by the people to enact legislation in accordance with their understanding of the common good. If a member was found, for example, to have voted on a particular measure in return for a payment of money, that would be clearly corrupt. Why should it be considered less corrupt if, instead of money, the coercion is in the form of a naked threat of professional and political injury?

That is unfortunately what has happened to many members of the Fine Gael Party in these Houses. In my opinion, the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party could be in breach of Article 15.10 of our Constitution.

I regret that the Taoiseach has denied his colleagues the option of a free vote. I welcome the fact that my party has agreed to allow its members a free vote. I advocated that, as did many other colleagues. I am conscious that members of my party in this House will be voting for this legislation, and I respect that. However, I will exercise my free vote and will oppose this Bill on Second Stage and remaining Stages when the Government offers us the opportunity to vote, not only because I believe in the protection of the mother as well as the protection of the unborn child, but because I believe the central premise of section 9 is flawed and wrong.