Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to speak briefly. This is one issue I feel very strongly about. At the committee we spoke about this at length. It is hard for me to accept a situation where we talk about the committee recommendations and not diverging from them but when it comes to this we massively diverge from them. It makes all our previous arguments about the committee recommendations seem a little tokenistic. We stick to them on one hand and then completely ignore them on the other.

We had countless conversations about doctors not being able to determine when risk begins. Everybody's situation can be so different. A patient can go from not being at risk to being seriously at risk in the space of seconds. It is not really good enough to say that we are not going to push it, today or on Report Stage. The committee was very clear on serious risk. There must be some sort of justification from the Minister for not removing "serious". I have read back and so have the other Senators. We watched the contributions in the Dáil. We did not come here without knowing what happened in there. I have never been sold on the reasons for not removing "serious", although I was in the committee when we were listening to experts in the area. I just wanted to make that brief contribution.