An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-18 ============================================================ Rónán Mullen (IND), National University of Ireland I was also glad to see the Luxembourgish ambassador here today. I was part of the European affairs committee delegation that went to Luxembourg recently. It is a very interesting country given all its minorities, including the many people who were not born there and, indeed, the many who travel there every day to work. It is also a country with a very interesting association with County Carlow because its patron saint is St. Willibrord, as the Deputy Leader probably knows very well. Whereas we often talk about all the monks who travelled from Ireland abroad, this is a man who came from England originally and studied in Carlow for 12 years. According to Wikipedia, he is the only saint who is buried in Luxembourg. Carlow is the county connected with Luxembourg for our European Presidency. I register my disappointment and that of many people over the passing in the Dáil last night of Second Stage legislation that proposes to remove the three-day wait for abortions. I spoke about this yesterday but what I did not mention was the rather lopsided situation whereby the two party leaders in Government, Deputies Martin and Harris, signalled at an early stage their intention to vote in a way that does not represent the position adopted by the majority in their own parties. While they say this is a matter of a free vote, in fact they are creating a lopsided situation because they are conspiring with other parties – left-wing parties – that do not allow a free vote. If everybody had been allowed a free vote, I wonder what way it would have gone yesterday. For example, I was in contact with one member of a left-wing party yesterday and I said I encouraged people to vote against the proposal, and that we need to give women the chance to at least pause to reflect, which would save many lives. The person responded to me that was certainly a positive thing they supported, and that they had stated so in their party, but that they were not prepared to lose the whip. It is fine for people like the Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, and the Tánaiste, Deputy Simon Harris, to pretend they are somehow great democrats, but in fact what they are doing is working behind the scenes with the other parties to move the dial on a very sensitive social issue in a way that does not reflect what their own membership expects of them and what the majority of their members would support. I commend in particular those Ministers in leadership positions who went the other way last night. I renew my call for a debate in this House, but also for the opportunity to put on the agenda that we need to work together to reduce the number of abortions. It is a tragic thing that the likes of Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, who were in favour of legalised abortion, used to talk about abortion being safe, legal and rare, but we are not even allowed to say that now. The Taoiseach will not say that abortion should be rare. Why? It is because he, like the Tánaiste, is captured by an abortion lobby that seems to be calling all the shots. The pile of bodies is rising higher, with over 10,000 babies losing their lives every year. These people do not seem to care. They portray themselves as people who want to create a cohesive, united, caring society and they have nothing to say about the fact that our abortion numbers are rising. This is a massive tragedy and a massive loss of human potential. There is a human cost, as Deputy Tóibín spoke about, not to mention the hurt caused to very many women. There are women who have spoken out. I recall in particular the remark of Moya Brennan, whom we all admired as a great artist. She said she wished somebody had told her before she had her abortion. There are testimonies like this that need to be heard. Please, can we have better leadership from our Government on this to at least allow different sides of this debate to be heard? --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-18/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:05+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-18