Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House and apologise for the fact that I will be unable to remain for the duration of the debate. I will obviously scrutinise it very carefully later on. I am attending an event involving the Human Dignity Award presentation. Senator Keogan will be there as well, so we will not be in a position to oppose this Bill on Second Stage. I assure the Minister that this Bill deserves to be opposed. It will be opposed and extensively scrutinised on Committee Stage, and extensive amendments will be proposed.

Notwithstanding the courtesies of the House, I have to say - and I hate to use such strong language - that this is disgraceful legislation. We have been presented today with some kind of sanitisation of this legislation as being some kind of respectful balance, having regard to people's right to access abortion which is now legal, tragically, and respect for people's right of freedom of assembly as guaranteed under the Constitution. I am reminded of the British Government's approach in asserting that Rwanda is safe because it says so, and that it will legislate to say so. These kind of guarantees that this is legal are summed up in the language used by the Minister today that it is not about criminalising lawful protest. Indeed, it is not, because the Minister proposes to make certain protests unlawful. How can you criminalise that which is lawful? Those are the kind of weasel words that are designed to reassure people that there is something reasonable about all of this.

The reality, in our country, is that we do not have abortion clinics per se. Abortion is available and it happens in GP surgeries and hospitals. People who access these places enjoy complete anonymity. The record of those who would witness, for whatever reason, to the injustice of abortion outside facilities where it takes place is that they are actually very few and mostly very respectful, which is what we would all want. What this Bill is actually about is finishing the work of the legislation for abortion five years ago in 2018. It is to crush dissent and make sure that the voice says that the unborn child is a human being that ought to be respected, cherished and welcomed into the world, the same as a child in Gaza or any other vulnerable child in any situation, is not to be heard. What we have had is the disgraceful situation of Government officials and representatives caving in to special interest groups that want to silence dissent. I cannot believe that what is provided for in this Bill is constitutional, when one considers that the deputy Garda commissioner appeared only a year ago before the health committee and called for signage to be erected outside facilities where abortions were being committed, on the mistaken assumption that hospitals were the main areas where services are provided at this juncture. Indeed, we heard the Garda Commissioner in the past saying that such legislation was not needed. The claims that people attending hospitals were being impeded by a lobby group were effectively undermined by the hospitals themselves. For example, Cork University Hospital released a statement to the effect that it had not received any complaints from patients regarding the protests.

What we see here is an example of what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil, where something really wrong and unjust is being done by some very respectable people, with great sanitised language and with pretensions of respect for democracy, freedom of expression and the free exchange of ideas. It is nothing of the sort. It is a desire to crush dissent, even from among the small number of people who might want to witness outside a medical facility that people could be attending for any purpose, or where there is no possibility of a person being personally intimidated or accosted, but where there might be the possibility of somebody seeing a smile, getting an offer of help or initiating a conversation that might lead them to choose not to have an abortion, with a life saved as a result. That is not to be tolerated because in the new Ireland, it is not a good news story if somebody decides not to have an abortion. The Government has abandoned any desire to even talk about reducing the number of abortions.

I remember when Bill and Hillary Clinton were advancing abortion in America. At that time, they said they wanted it to be safe, legal and rare. In today's Ireland, you are not allowed to use that language. You are not allowed to say it should be rare. Why should it be rare? It is a person's choice. The unborn child is a nothing in the eyes of these people. That is a tragedy for our country. Any legislator who supports that situation, and any legislation that supports the ruthless crushing of even respectful witnessing to the dignity and the humanity of the unborn, is doing their country a major disservice. If the Minister wonders why politics and politicians are brought into such disrepute, it is because legislation like this says to a significant proportion of people in our country that politicians really do not care about what is right and wrong. They just go with whatever the special interest groups that are most influential at a given time want, and they give it to them on a plate. It is shameful legislation and it will be opposed on Committee Stage.