It is absolutely terrible that women and anybody who can become pregnant have had to wait eight years for this to happen. There has been no Government Bill and no Opposition party one up to now either. It is a crying shame that people have had to endure this. The O'Shea report made it very clear, especially about the three-day wait. I hate that term. It should be called a second doctor visit or something because people get the erroneous impression it just adds three days to the wait. However, particularly if an appointment is at the end of the week, if you have been trying to make a GP appointment for over a week then in most cases you will be waiting a week or two and in surveys that have been done a quarter of the women interviewed were waiting more than three days for the second visit. This especially affects the marginalised, rural women, anyone who is a victim of domestic violence, people in homeless accommodation and people who not have public or car transport. The poorest in society always pay the price. Unnecessary delays just add barriers for women. There were other recommendations in the O'Shea report, such as that medical reasons be looked at again. I put on record that there is no other country where there is a distinction made between fatal and severe abnormality. It was only done in Ireland on the Oireachtas committee to avoid a debate about disability in the repeal referendum. Now people are suffering because of that. Imagine babies' bodies are still being transported in the backs of cars, as was testified only recently on the radio. There were also recommendations on safe access zones and where conscientious objection blocks any provision in an area. In the corridor here today I heard two men discussing women's healthcare, as if we need more of that in this country. They made the claim there are 10,000 children alive because of the second visit. It is put out by people who seem to submit AI parliamentary questions or whatever. I have never seen anything to back that up. The IFPA has said 98% of women go ahead. I also want to make something clear. From talking to Women on Web when abortion was illegal and we were trying to help people access it safely, that group made the point that sometimes when women received the pills online they did not go ahead because they could clearly make that decision without pressure and stress, so that is not an excuse for being patronising towards women. I obviously welcome that Sinn Féin has put a Bill on abortion before the House, I think for the first time. I had a Bill on this I proposed on First Stage in January but I did not have the Private Members' time, so I am obviously glad for parties with more time to put these measures, but we cannot ignore the timing and the context here. A couple of weeks ago we were here with a Bill which had very important things about decriminalisation, things that the health spokesperson for Sinn Féin supported in 2021, because I found statements on it. There is backtracking going on and this was cover, but I am glad there is a Bill being put because I wanted to put such a Bill and I am delighted somebody else is doing it. It is also important not to rewrite history. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael did not win repeal. It was a grassroots movement that won repeal. There are people claiming here all the things they did for repeal. It is a bit like the GPO in 1916 and all that. Not everyone was there and some parties did not support this in the committee. In some parties no TDs supported it. It is very easy to jump on when everybody agrees. It is not easy when you are pioneering repeal Bills. When I put the first repeal Bill 11 TDs voted for it. Let us have progress but let this not be a cover for backtracking on essential women's rights. We need to go forward and fight the tide that is pushing back against people's right to bodily autonomy. We have seen the religious right and far right in the US take away abortion rights and we cannot allow this to happen in Ireland.

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