Dublin Bay South candidate Ivana Bacik has dismissed Senator Ronan Mullen’s claims that State Media are overwhelmingly biased in favour of abortion.
Even though Bacik was trying to overturn a previous referendum removing the right to life of unborn babies in 2018, she has now implied that such a ‘democratic’ procedure now evidently elevates abortion beyond the realms of criticism.
Mullen began:
Last week, I raised the issue of RTÉ's continuing bias on a range of social issues, particularly abortion. RTÉ has failed to represent the views of the one third of voters who opposed the repeal of the eighth amendment, many of whom regard the consequences of repeal as having been catastrophic for human rights, unborn babies and, indeed, good quality healthcare in this country. Last Sunday, RTÉ was at it again with a guttingly one-sided celebration of the matter on the "Sunday with Miriam" show, with no attention paid to the voices of those who believe that human lives are tragically and unjustly being lost here. I listened to a webinar a couple of weeks ago when I heard the voices of women who regret having abortions and who report systemic denialism whereby, at best, they are ignored by the media and, at worst, they experience hostility. I raise this matter on behalf of people who feel indignant about all of this from the public service broadcaster. Those who are going to refuse to pay the television licence fee in the future really cannot be blamed as long as this goes on. We are going to have to keep talking about this until somebody addresses the problem.I want to raise the issue of what are called patient private property, PPP, accounts. Essentially, these are accounts that are administered by the HSE on behalf of vulnerable people who are in long-term residential care facilities run by or on behalf of the HSE. The people in question are older individuals, those with mental health issues or intellectual disabilities and wards of court. Property is held by these PPP accounts and can be administered and used by representatives of the HSE directly or through a third party or agent for the benefit and care of the person involved. The HSE operates more than 15,000 of these accounts at present. Guidelines are in place to ensure that the accounts are operated ethically and in a transparent fashion, and always in the best interests of the vulnerable.
This system is administered under section 2 of Health (Repayment Scheme) Act 2006. There is a problem with how these accounts operate or, more to the point, with the fact that they only apply to people who are being cared for within the public system. Section 2 refers to "a person ... being cared for by, or on behalf of, the Executive". People who are being cared for in private nursing homes, no matter how vulnerable they are, do not get the benefit or protection of the scheme. I have received representations on this matter from those who are familiar with the sector and who work in the area of the rights of elderly and vulnerable people. They inform me that they believe that what is being done here puts patients in private homes at a disadvantage. They feel that the accounts and property of those persons should also be capable of being administered and used on their behalf, for their welfare and with appropriate safeguards. This problem could be remedied by a couple of very small changes to the 2006 Act to make it that people in private care could also have their property administered in this way and that there would be safeguards in place to make sure that everything operates ethically.
I ask for a debate on this issue. Perhaps that could take place in the context of a more general debate on nursing homes in the wake of the Covid pandemic. I am very interested to know whether the Government has considered this matter and whether it plans to address the lacuna that exists in law and our policy relating to the protection of persons in nursing home care.
Bacik responded:
Senator Mullen spoke about bias on the part of our national broadcaster, RTÉ. I remind him that three years ago next Tuesday the people voted by 66% to repeal the eighth amendment. Perhaps it needs to be stressed again that we have repealed the eighth amendment.
The Oireachtas has voted and passed legislation. Terminations of pregnancy are legally available in Ireland and women need those reproductive health services. I am proud to be one of the people who campaigned for the repeal of the eighth amendment. We all stand in solidarity in the context of the result of the referendum.
Mullen then said:
One should not be left out of the debate when one is in the minority.
Bacik:
It is bit rich of the Senator to complain, three years on, about the result of the referendum.
At this we must interject with an obvious point, Bacik and her party are determined to potentially crash the Irish economy by removing the nation’s border with a reversal of the 2004 Referendum on Citizenship, which passed by an overwhelming 4:1 majority. Clearly neither she nor Labour care about Referendum results.
Mullen then said:
This is intolerance by the pro-abortion side.
Bacik responded:
I am not pro-abortion. I am pro-choice.
Again, if Bacik were not pro abortion, why is she in a party that crippled Irish people with taxes over the past decade, made children homeless and forced hundreds of thousands to emigrate? Her party deliberately made it as difficult as possible to own a home and raise a family in the cruellest fashion, leading to a 25% decline in birth rates in the process. If that is not pro abortion, then what is?
She continued:
e must remember the thousands of women in Ireland who have had abortions, their families, women who face crisis pregnancies and the awful catastrophic diagnosis that so many women and their families have faced in the context of fatal foetal abnormality. We need to be sensitive in our language. Talking about people as being pro-abortion, as Senator Mullen consistently does, is insensitive and does not reflect the reality. Those of us who campaigned for repeal are pro-choice. We want to see women having choice. Women in Ireland now do have that choice thanks to the campaigners and the people who voted in support of repeal three years ago.
They do not want women to have a choice, if Labour did, they would not have penalised families so brutally during their lengthy spell in government in the past decade.
We agree with Bacik on one point though, ‘language matters on this issue’. Some ‘prolife’ groups in Ireland are using the term ‘prochoice’, this is a stunning betrayal of their values. It is pro abortion or anti baby, the economic policies of Labour have shown those terms to be apt.
We encourage EVERYONE to get behind any potential prolife candidates in Dublin Bay South in opposition to the pro abortion lobby, who will not just seek to promote abortion directly, but will promote it indirectly through austerity as they did a decade ago.
Babies are being born alive in Irish hospitals and left to die on tables. This cannot be.
