Safe Access to Termination of Pregnancy Services Bill 2021: Committee Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2022-02-10
============================================================

Rónán Mullen (IND), National University of Ireland

-----then it would be very much caught by this legislation.
What the Senator said does not offer reassurance to anybody who thinks it would be wrong to criminalise a person for simply expressing a view to a third party, such as a party who happens to be involved in the provision of services in a hospital across the road from where the conversation is taking place. This shows that the legislation is extremely draconian. It is about silencing. In a country where we have differences of opinion and where particular services are now legally available, I am up for making sure the law prevents anybody from being harassed or intimidated or any of that bad stuff. As for stopping people from having a conversation in a coffee shop, we all need to call ourselves aside here.

---

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/2022-02-10/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:50:07+00:00
Sitting date: 2022-02-10