Lorraine Clifford Lee (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming here today. He has had a long number of days debating the legislation in the other House. It is a great relief to have legislation before us eventually. I pay tribute to the Minister and everybody who worked in a collective manner to bring us to this point today. I refer specifically to the committee that debated it for many months. It took a very acute personal toll on members of the committee. I pay tribute to the Chairman of the committee, Senator Noone, and other members of that committee who are in this House. It was fantastic work and represented a new approach to solving a big issue that had been long debated and considered so divisive that we, as legislators, could not even touch it. Setting up the Citizens' Assembly and then the Oireachtas committee is a very good model. I was sceptical about it at the start, but I now think it was a very good model to follow in future.

I also pay tribute to many groups in civil society who kept the issue burning for 35 years and never let it go. They worked very hard often putting their own safety at risk to ensure the issue would not be allowed to fade into the background. I pay tribute to the many women who had to bring their cases to court. I refer specifically to Amanda Mellet and many others who had to remain nameless. I also pay tribute to Savita Halappanavar who in her tragic and misfortunate death brought us to this day. It accelerated the pace of change and we should remember her today.

I pay tribute to the hundreds and thousands of Irish women who bore a very private pain and shame completely unnecessarily. They had to travel to get basic healthcare and went through unbelievable grief over the years. I am glad that we can finish the journey of rectifying that awful position into which we, as a State, put them.

I look forward to a respectful debate in the coming weeks. We should not have a rerun of the referendum at this point; we have had that debate.