Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I would like to wish the Taoiseach well on the day he is resigning and I also wish the incoming Taoiseach well.

I agree with all that Senator Ruane said. I think the first priority for the incoming Taoiseach must be to set a date for the holding of a referendum on the repeal of the eighth amendment. I am delighted that the committee is being established. It is important that the committee would do its work and consider what sort of legislation might be introduced were a referendum on repeal to be passed.

We have heard about several cases this week, particularly the appalling case Senator Ruane described of the young girl who was denied a termination of pregnancy and who was sectioned in circumstances where she and her mother understood they were being offered a termination of pregnancy. That appalling case alone would be enough to warrant the holding of an urgent referendum on repeal. On top of that, however, the United Nations Human Rights Committee has today issued a second decision to hold Ireland in breach of human rights law for failing to offer any sort of compassionate response to a case of fatal foetal abnormality. I am referring to the case of Siobhan Whelan, the Wexford woman whose treatment, if one reads the decision of the UN Human Rights Committee, was appalling. She was treated with an utter lack of compassion by all the health professionals in Ireland with the exception of one locum doctor. She was eventually offered the termination of pregnancy she sought on foot of the very harrowing and cruel diagnosis of fatal foetal abnormality in Liverpool, not in Ireland. The UN Human Rights Committee described her treatment as cruel, inhumane and degrading. We are told again, as we were last year in the case of Amanda Mellet, that our laws are simply not good enough for women.

The UK Department of Health has today published statistics which show that, last year alone, 3,265 Irish women travelled to the UK for abortions. This has to stop. We have to stop exporting these most harrowing and tragic cases, we have to stop exporting thousands of our women and we have to repeal the eighth amendment.

I think the key priority for the incoming Taoiseach must be to set a date for the holding of the referendum. The members of the Oireachtas committee can then discuss what follows and what replaces the amendment in terms of legislative provision for abortion in line, for example, with the recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly. The clear need for holding the referendum has been laid out. It needs to be held, I would say, by the end of February or early March of next year. I think that date should be set. There is a growing momentum around the realisation that the referendum is necessary. Successive generations of Irish women, my own included, have been failed over decades. It is time we stood up and said that no more children be detained and no more women be denied the compassionate services they require here in Ireland. We need to act now. I call on the incoming Taoiseach to do that.