Paul Bradford (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----that will result in problems, not solve them. This is the issue on which we must reflect.

I look forward to the Minister of State's comments on the constitutional side. It will be a lengthy, weighty and substantive debate and I respect his opinion, as he has expressed it strongly in the Lower House.

There has been so much interest in this section because it is at the core of the ideology behind this debate. No perfect amendment has ever been produced in either House, but Senator Healy Eames has produced a view of how we can help the presumably many mothers who may have suicidal tendencies and ideation in pregnancy. She has proposed a formula that works.

We are being asked to inscribe in our law forever a scheme that witness after witness at our two sets of hearings claimed would not work. One can never base judgments purely on how many people write to one saying "Yes" or "No". One must do a little bit of deeper thinking. We all know that, to date, the majority of psychiatrists in Ireland who have let their opinions on this legislation be known have appealed to us not to enact section 9.