I commend my party leader, Deputy Cairns, and her colleagues in the party, including Ellen Casey, on taking a lead on this Bill. Eight years ago, people in every part of this country voted to remove the eighth amendment from the Constitution. They did so because they had listened to women. They listened to women who had been sent away from their own country at moments of profound grief, fear and medical crisis. One of the central issues in that campaign was the tragedy of fatal foetal abnormality. Women and couples told the country what had happened to them. They described receiving devastating diagnoses in Irish hospitals and being told the care they needed could not be provided here. They described booking flights under a cloud of shame, travelling abroad, navigating an unfamiliar health system and trying to stave off the effects of the trauma they were living through before returning home carrying grief that had been made worse by the actions of this State. Those stories changed Ireland, yet years later some families are still being put through versions of the same ordeal. The recent public testimony of Denise Whitmore brought this home with painful clarity. Denise learned at a routine scan in 2024 that her baby had a fatal condition. Instead of being able to receive care in Ireland, Denise had to travel to Britain. Her experience is a warning that the law is still failing people in the precise circumstances the referendum campaign asked us to address. The problem is the current legislation's narrow and inflexible parameters. In cases of fatal foetal abnormality doctors must operate within a framework that requires a level of certainty that is simply not possible in all instances. In real clinical situations, that level of certainty may not be available. Families facing devastating diagnoses should not be left in limbo because the law demands a level of precision that clinicians cannot realistically provide. The result for clinicians is fear and hesitation. Doctors are left worried about the legal consequences of acting. Families are left waiting for certainty that may never come, and some women are still forced to leave the country for healthcare. This is not what people voted for in 2018. This Bill would make the law more workable, more compassionate and more true to the complexity of real-world experiences of fatal foetal abnormality. It would provide clear legal space for care where there is a fatal condition affecting the foetus. It would also address the chilling effect of criminalisation of doctors who are providing healthcare in good faith. No decent healthcare system should force clinicians to practice under a spectre of fear when dealing with complex, sensitive and time-critical cases. No woman should be told in the middle of a pregnancy ending in tragedy that the Irish health system cannot care for her because the wording of the law is too narrow. This Bill is not about reopening the referendum. It is about honouring it and taking on the recommendations of the Government's own review. Repeal was not meant to replace constitutional callousness with legislative obstruction. It was meant to ensure that women could access compassionate healthcare in their own country. We should allow this Bill to progress.

Sentiment score: -0.11