Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I agree with Senator Burke's intervention. It would be nice to get a hot roll on the rolling stock, I often think.

I propose an amendment to the Order of Business, that item No. 7 be taken before No. 1. This is to enable the introduction of the protection of children (online verification) Bill. The Bill is in the interests of child protection and would require access to pornographic material on the Internet to be subject to age verification and provide for related matters. I spoke on this last week and hope to get a debate on it this coming week on Second Stage and would be grateful for the support of the House on it.

Last Friday, the Department of Health released the latest abortion figures, showing 10,033 abortions took place in Ireland in 2023. A few years ago, in 2019, after the abortion legislation, we heard the figure was 6,666. It is a massive rise on the 2022 figure of 8,156 as well. Since the law changed, we have seen a 250% increase. The life of one in six babies now ends in abortion. It is hard to believe we have reached this point as a country. This, sadly, is what the mantra of choice looks like when examined in broad daylight. To call all of this healthcare, as many now do, is unconscionable and utterly dishonest.

The Department of Health released the latest figures after 7 p.m. last Friday in an obvious attempt to kill the story. Maybe it realised if the public were informed about the full extent of the loss of life, they would question senior politicians about how people were effectively lied to before the referendum in 2018, when it was promised abortion would be rare if people voted for repeal. The sad reality is we cannot even talk now and the Government has no interest in a policy to reduce the number of abortions. That is a human scandal. We should at least be able to agree in this House and across the Oireachtas, even if there was no change in the law, that we could have public policy directly aimed at discouraging and reducing abortions. Each time it happens, a life is lost. It is a tragedy for many of the women involved as well, if not all of them, and many suffer.

I spoke yesterday about the accountability we need from our national broadcaster. I and others made complaints about the recent partisan "RTÉ Investigates" programmes. We have not even got the response you are supposed to get when you make a complaint. Accountability at RTÉ is about how it spends the taxpayer money it gets but is also about whether it is committed to a culture of impartiality. There seems to be a woke new generation of journalists who say "Error has no rights" and there are stories where they feel no obligation to present the other side. Abortion and the huge increase in the number of abortions constitute one of them. The lack of public debate about encouraging positive alternatives to abortion is not getting airtime from our public sector media. That is also a scandal.

I know we will not get a debate on these matters this side of the recess, but I would be grateful if, in the public interest, we could have a debate on the tragic massive rise in abortion figures and the implications it has for the public debate on abortion.