Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----who did incredible work on this issue over so many years. Despite their small number, these Senators succeeded more than once in putting this matter on the agenda of the Oireachtas when it was not on the agenda of the majority. It is on their shoulders that we stand tonight.

At the end of such a long journey, it is astonishing to reflect on how far we have come in the past year. We pass this Bill just over six months since the people had their say. It is just two years since the Citizens' Assembly had its first meeting on the eighth amendment. This time last the year the Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution was still deliberating. The Citizens' Assembly proved itself. There was a fair degree of healthy cynicism and scepticism in respect of it at the start but it proved itself to be a very powerful model of participative democracy. It is a model we should retain for the next big social issue that needs to be addressed in an era in which people and their politicians work together because there is still so much work to do. Voting to repeal the eighth does not end the equality agenda, issues of women's equality, or our work to create the inclusive society we wish to have for our children and a real, mature, tolerant republic.

So many people ask what is next. There is so much more to do. A younger generation has been galvanised by the repeal referendum, while knowing that it owes much to those who went before it. Many of them, including myself, were not born in the Ireland of 1983. We certainly do not want to live in that Ireland today.

I thank the campaigners who fought for 35 years to change a nation, to change hearts, to change minds and to break down barriers. I thank the minority who fought a battle in here when it was ignored by the majority. Now that change has been embraced by a majority at the ballot boxes and a majority in the Oireachtas. Like everybody here I am sure, today I think mostly of the hundreds of thousands of women who were forced to make the journey to access care that should have been available in their own country. They are not faceless, nameless women; they are women we know. They are our friends, our mums, our wives, our sisters, our nieces, and our work colleagues. Many of these women, who left under a cloud of secrecy, shame and silence, are still dealing with social stigma from their peers, from their communities and, up until now, from their state. On 25 May, the people of Ireland said "No more".

We cannot turn back the clock on what we did to those women but we can ensure that we enter a new era for Irish women, one in which we value them, respect their decisions and choices and care for them in their own country. I look forward to a time, not very far from now, when we will be able to ensure that women experiencing crisis pregnancies will be looked after here at home by their own doctors and will need not to fear that they will be stigmatised for their choices or that there will be a lack of support for them or their families. I also look forward to being able to assure our doctors, nurses and midwives that they can be confident in the decisions they make in helping their patients and in providing the care they require. I look forward to this Bill going to the President and to continuing my work in the Department of Health and with the HSE and all healthcare professionals who will now come together to provide this new service, which will be free, safe and legal, as we move closer to making that new Ireland a reality. The many women I have met who thought this day would never come can now breathe a sigh of relief. It has finally happened. Today, together, we are making history.