Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish everyone in the House who is running in the elections the very best. I was pleased when I got 36,000 votes ten years ago in Midlands-North-West. I would have been even more pleased had I got a haul that ran into the 40,000s like the Leader with her 44,000. Just as I have never really put out of my mind completely the thought of having another go at a European election some time, maybe the Leader will not either. I wish her and everyone else involved the best in the coming hours. We all have friends across all parties and Independents who had good weekends, had near misses or lost their seats. It is an important process.

The Government has reason to be happy, in that nothing seismically bad happened to it. In many ways, it has reasons to be satisfied. Nonetheless, there is change afoot in our country. It is visible in the way people voted and in how people got elected who would not have got elected previously. It behoves the Government to read the signs of the times and not to believe that it now has some mandate to keep doing what it does, that being, failing sometimes to listen to minority concerns on various issues in our country. Be they right or wrong, they are issues that the Government needs to take more seriously. There will be consequences in a future general election if it does not.

In that regard, I wish to mention important legislation that will be before the House on Thursday. It is divisive legislation around assisted human reproduction and surrogacy. I have serious disagreements with people, including friends, whom I value highly. This legislation did not get anything like challenging scrutiny in the Dáil, so it is important that we take our time with it. Assisted human reproduction on its own would be massive legislation, but including domestic and international surrogacy in it raises major issues of concern for people. We need to ensure that the legislation is not rushed through the Houses in the closing weeks of this term. We need careful and determined scrutiny of the issues and time for proper debate and amendments. I hope there will be no rancour, only serious scrutiny and challenging of one another’s ideas. The rights of women, particularly poorer ones, in other countries are very much in play in this issue and they must be spoken up for. There are many other issues with this legislation as well.