Rónán Mullen (Independent)

Last week, I spoke about the ridiculous report of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, CEDAW, and how it wants us to rerun our care referendum on mothers in the home. That committee was not satisfied with the overwhelming rejection by the Irish people of tired modernist thinking and thinks we should try again.I now draw attention to that same committee's commentary on abortion in the Republic of Ireland. The advice it provided predated by days the release by the Department of Health of the annual abortion figures for Ireland, which seemed to have been smuggled out on the last Friday evening in July very shortly before the Oireachtas closed for business. The figures are appalling and distressing. If I were in any of the parties of government of recent years, I would be ashamed and would feel inclined to bring those figures out under the cover of darkness. In 2024, there were 10,852 abortions in Ireland, which was certainly a doubling or more of the pre-2018 figures. So much for the Fine Gael "Safe, legal and rare" mantra, which has led us to where we are now. Is this really what people wanted or expected when they voted to remove protection from unborn children some years ago?

I remember well when Irish media would not carry any advertisement that had the claim that the pro-life clause in our Constitution saved more than 100,000 lives over 30 years. They said it was misinformation. We are a mere six years on and now we know because the abortion death toll has reached more than 55,000 lives lost. Let us think of the children who would now be alive if we had not taken that step in 2018, but CEDAW prefers to lecture us on what it calls persistent barriers to local, timely, equitable and accessible services. Let us imagine talking about barriers to services when one in six children is now being aborted annually. Can there ever be enough abortions for the UN?

The Government does not stop at letting the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women tell us what we should do. The Irish representative on CEDAW has called on Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic to decriminalise abortion. We have pressurised El Salvador and Malta to broaden abortion access as well. Not only do we abandon our own children, but we seek to influence other countries to abort theirs. It is a truly shameful situation that having embraced death and destruction itself our Government seems to want to drag others into the darkness on this and to further ensure the pace of killing. In very recent years, through the Irish Aid programme, millions of euro in Irish taxpayers' money has been provided to the internationally discredited abortion provider Planned Parenthood.

Some 55,000 children have died since we passed our laws a mere six years ago. The population of Waterford, almost, has been disappeared. It is a tragic and shameful situation. It is an affront to any decent person of conscience and we have to say enough is enough. When will we be big enough to have a debate in our society about whether we made a mistake with this legislation? When will we face up to the reality that this appalling abuse of human rights must be revisited?