Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I did not do the Senator justice and I apologise for that.

I am very unhappy with the Minister's response to what is a very reasonable proposal. Maybe he will give us more than he has done but I fear that the more he fails to engage with this issue, the more he is revealing the ideological heart of this Bill. If it not his ideological heart, then it is the ideological heart of people behind him, from the expert group onwards.

It is really not acceptable for the Minister to come into the House, act like the Borg and repeat standard lines like the idea the Bill cannot be prescriptive of medical practice. That sounds so reasonable until one realises it is just a mantra. Of course, the Bill is prescriptive of medical practice; it has to be. It is not prescriptive about the details of medical practice which must be left to medical practice.

Let us just look at the section which states: "It shall be lawful to carry out a medical procedure in accordance with this section in the course of which, or as a result of, which an unborn life is ended..." subject to there being two medical practitioners and their having to assess a real and substantial risk and their forming a reasonable opinion. That reasonable opinion is defined in a most unsatisfactory way. That is all prescription. The Minister should not play with language and try to pull the wool over our eyes.

The Minister is not in the parliamentary party now, where most people can be suborned because there are other issues like fear of party whips and so on. The Minister is in the second Chamber in which we have to ask him serious hard questions and where words have to mean something. This legislation is certainly prescriptive of medical practice; it has to be. This legislation is not the "doctors shall do whatever they see fit Bill". This Bill is quite prescriptive, and rightly so.

The Minister says this Bill cannot be prescriptive of medical practice but he knows, I know and the world and its mother knows the question of whether a child is anaesthetised, in the context of an abortion, has nothing to do with and could not inhibit whatever a doctor has to do. The only thing I can conclude is that the Minister believes in the use of an anaesthetic because he thinks we are all under the ether here of easy soundbites like the Bill cannot be prescriptive of medical practice.

I ask the Minister to be a Minister and to engage on behalf of the Government with the Legislature. Legitimate issues have surfaced here. I say in passing that if Senator O'Donnell is right in what she suggests - I think she asked it in a most helpful way and Senator Norris concurred with her - and if that disposes of the issue and we can be assured, that is fine but the Minister should not expect us to leave this issue alone when it has not even been ventilated in the Dáil and when we are operating against the background of a constitutional protection of the unborn. The Minister should not expect us to be neutral, blithe or uncaring about the question of whether an unborn child being aborted can feel pain and whether there ought to be a legislative duty on doctors and other medical personnel to ensure it does not happen. I ask the Minister for a better response than he has given to date.