Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

We will start with amendment No. 3, which proposes, "In page 6, lines 10 and 11, to delete “within 100 metres of an entrance to either House of the Oireachtas”." I will resume from where we were on page 6. The clause as it currently stands states:

Nothing in section 2(2) shall prohibit a person from engaging in lawful protest, advocacy or dissent within 100 metres of an entrance to either House of the Oireachtas, provided such protest, advocacy or dissent is not directed at a specific relevant healthcare premises, or persons accessing a relevant healthcare premises, within that 100 metres.

Clearly, section 3(1), as it stands, is designed to establish a principle regardless of whether there is such a healthcare premises within 100 m of the entrance to either House of the Oireachtas. It is so important that people in a democracy are able to express their legitimate political views, in this case, about the injustice of abortion and to invite those who might be contemplating abortion generally to consider that there is always help available to help them make a better life-giving choice for themselves and their babies. Therefore, it is seen clearly by the drafters of this legislation that there is something so important about freedom of expression in the context of democratic participation that there should be no limits on a person's ability to communicate outside of either house of the Oireachtas.

Members will recall that during the previous session when we were discussing a previous amendment, I made the point that this free speech principle is so important that we should be at pains to protect it in universities and institutes of higher education, and that anything that would interfere with a person's ability to communicate important ideas on this very life-and-death topic is a problem in our democracy. That is why I have questions and concerns about the constitutionality of this legislation and that principle that free speech should be protected. Of course, there are no absolutes when it comes to people's rights, even their constitutional rights. It is certainly the case that where a person's free speech, or use of their free speech privilege, if you like, could impact on another person's welfare or safety, then there can be legitimate legal limits. As I pointed out last week, those limits are there if we look at our public order legislation, which makes it an offence to engage in threatening, abusive, intimidating or, indeed, in some cases, obscene communication. Clearly, therefore, there are limits to free speech.

What we have seen so far in our attempts to legislate around this issue is the need for a very careful balance to be drawn so that my right to express my ideas and views, especially on important topics but not just on important topics, is only limited to the extent necessary to protect the individual. Perhaps I can speak more freely now that our younger people have gone. I did not want to discuss the obscenity of abortion or the Government's proposal in their presence. What is really disgraceful about this legislation, however, is that it tears up the rule book about freedom of expression and tries to create a unique category of human behaviour, namely, the carrying out of abortions. It tries to basically say that shall be above scrutiny to a literally unprecedented degree. There is no parallel I can think of when we have ever legislated before and, as I said, to do that in circumstances where no problem has been disclosed. I will give more specific details on the fact that the case simply has not been made successfully that there are any breaches of public order or any intimidation of people going on. I challenged the Minister, and I challenge him here again, to give us chapter and verse on who he has been consulting with, who said what and what evidence he has received. The world and its mother know the two things about the provision of abortion in this country. It has been very damagingly stitched into the medical and healthcare system to such a degree that it would be impossible to know at any point who was entering what premises for what reason.That is doing an awful lot of damage to the practice of medicine in our country. Yet, at least it gives comfort to those who do not like to hear any criticism of abortion and who say there can be no direct protesting of abortion, such as that which goes on in countries where they have specific abortion clinics. I do not say that there should be no standards about what conduct should be permissible outside such abortion clinics. I am strict about that; anything threatening, abusive, insulting or obscene should be prevented.

This particular amendment is supported by Senator Keogan. I will speak to amendments Nos. 3 and 4 together. Amendment No. 3 proposes to remove the clause “within 100 metres of an entrance to either House of the Oireachtas”. Amendment No. 4 proposes to remove the clause “, within that 100 metres”. That would mean that section would then read:

Nothing in section 2(2)shall prohibit a person from engaging in lawful protest, advocacy or dissent, provided such a protest, advocacy or dissent is not directed at a specific relevant healthcare premises or persons accessing a relevant healthcare premises or persons accessing a relevant healthcare premises.

I invite my friends and colleagues who are present on the Seanad benches to try to think about this as objectively as they can. I know there is pressure on people who are in political parties but is that not the honourable compromise? It does not create some kind of a cordon sanitairefor allegedly dirty people who have conscience concerns about abortion and who want to discourage it generally in our society. Instead of creating this unprecedented cordon sanitaire, it simply says that if a person protests, advocates or dissents, they should not direct it at a specific relevant healthcare premises or persons who are accessing it. We could have a law that is backed up by regulations regarding a person who holds a poster outside the Rotunda Hospital or the new national maternity hospital.

Tragically, one of the situations that has resulted from the political about-face of recent years is that we have gone from a situation where a healthcare premises, in the context of the delivery of maternity care, could not end the life of an unborn child. Obviously, necessary healthcare procedures were always allowed, even if that resulted in the loss of the life of a child, but there could not be the deliberate targeting of an unborn child in any maternity healthcare setting. That was something I thought was good and a credit to our country but the exact opposite is now the case. It is now not possible to have a maternity healthcare facility that is ethically and professionally driven to protect both mothers and their unborn babies. We have now gone from one model that completely excluded one area of activity to another model that completely excludes the kind of healthcare that many doctors and specialists wish for and which many ordinary people, including those who voted “No” in the 2018 referendum. I daresay this includes many of those who voted “Yes”, because there are people who voted “Yes” in the 2018 referendum who wanted abortion to be a possibility in certain cases but they did not necessarily want it to be mandatory on every single maternity healthcare premises. They did not necessarily want to exclude the possibility of a different ethical and professional approach being allowed to breathe, consistent with top medical standards. We have a disastrous new intolerance of an alternative model of maternal healthcare delivery. I do not think that most of the people of Ireland wanted such intolerance.

This was always presented as an issue of choice. If it is an issue of choice-----