Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-17
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Ivana Bacik (LAB), Dublin Bay South

It is a residual, insulting, patriarchal mistrust of women that forms the basis of the mandatory three-day wait and the Government's unwillingness to engage with the evidence that other change is needed.
I welcome the Taoiseach's confirmation that he will vote in support of the Private Members' Bill to remove the three-day wait on Second Stage tonight, but even if that reform is introduced, it will not be enough. It will not be enough, in particular, for women who receive a devastating diagnosis of fatal foetal abnormality and who still have to travel abroad because of the unnecessarily restrictive provisions in the current law.
The Taoiseach asked barrister Marie O’Shea to lead a review into how abortion care was working in Ireland. Her report was published three years ago. From that moment, he and his colleagues were on notice the system was failing women and that arbitrary and paternalistic processes were failing women and, indeed, doctors. Therefore, we need to go further than removing the mandatory three-day wait. We need urgent reform of the overly restrictive provisions on fatal foetal anomaly and implementation of all the recommendations from Marie O’Shea’s report.
The three-day wait is just one serious obstacle and women cannot wait any longer for it to be repealed, so can we have a timeline for this change? None was forthcoming from the Government yesterday. Three years on from the O’Shea review, when will we see all of her recommendations implemented to deliver effective reproductive care and abortion rights?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:09+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-17