Tag Archives: breda o’brien

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Last night.

On RTÉ’s Prime Time, presenter David McCullagh spoke to Gerry Edwards, of Termination for Medical Reasons Ireland, and Tracy Harkin, of Every Life Counts, about the UN’s criticism of Ireland’s abortion laws.

From last night’s discussion:

Tracy Harkin: “I think, myself, as a mother, who has a daughter who has been diagnosed with a life-limiting disability, I find this report from the United Nations disturbing for a number of reasons. Firstly, I suppose what’s deeply distressing for many parents involved in our support network, and other charities that work with families that have lost babies to these conditions is the language the United Nations has chosen to use.”

“Terms like ‘fatal foetal abnormality’, ‘incompatible with life’, they’re such harsh sounding, dehumanising terms. And I think for parents like myself and for the many parents throughout Ireland who have lost their little ones to these conditions, that’s not how they see their children at all.”

“Their experiences have not been heard by in this report which is deeply disturbing; parents have been speaking out, for example, in our organisation, Every Life Counts, for the last few years, calling for better support and services to be rolled out in maternity hospitals throughout Ireland to help them make the most of the time to parent their child, to love their child, to hug their child, to, you know, smell their child as any mother wants to.”

“And this is so important, such an important pathway to healing for these mothers and I think it’s alarming that the only option, or solution that the United Nations is fixated on is abortion. You know, these are children, human beings with severe disabilities and there’s not an agreed list, neither will be, and I think for us parents, for myself, before I had my little daughter Kathleen Rose, who’s now 9 years of age, you know she’s such a wonderful little character, she’s brought such joy to my life. Many of our parents didn’t have that time with their little ones and maybe only had minutes or days but they all said that that time was so important to healing. And there’s more and more research coming out to show that, in contrast, abortion increases despair and depression among mothers because they don’t have that closure.”

David McCullagh: “Tracy Harkin, sorry to cut across you, you talk about having services available to allow parents to spend time with their children, however short that time unfortunately may be. And I don’t think anybody’s suggesting that people shouldn’t be able to make that choice. But simply that others, who feel differently, shouldn’t be deprived of their choice, for what is best for their family.”

Harkin: “Well, I think the main thing here is accurate information and I think what’s missing from this whole conversation is also to look at what’s happened in other countries. What has the impact been of legislation in other countries. You look at the UK for example, over 90% of children with any disability whatsoever are aborted right up to birth. I mean most of us have their children with Down syndrome, Spina Bifida, in our communities, we love them, we fundraise for them. There’s a chilling effect to legislation here which the United Nations has chosen to ignore, time and time again. And it’s also important to mention that this case was brought forward by the Centre for Reproductive Rights which are a large, wealthy organisation with many millions at their disposal and their only focus, worldwide, is to promote abortion…”

Later

Gerry Edwards: “I think it’s very important, again in the interest of language, that we are quite clear that there is a difference between disabilities and life-limiting conditions and fatal foetal anomalies which are conditions which are not capable of sustaining independent life outside the womb.”

“Our son had a condition called severe anencephaly. Most of his skull was missing and his brain was missing. He could not sustain independent life, there was no question whatsoever of him surviving for any length of time. And that was confirmed to us by five different medical professionals in three hospitals in two jurisdictions.”

“My wife would have been forced to continue with that pregnancy for five more months in this country, not able to bear the social contact with other people, working with the people that she worked with, being stopped by people on the streets, in the full knowledge that our son would not die, or would not live, I beg your pardon. And this was the situation which was absolute torture for us and we made a decision which was in our best interest and in the best interest of our family.”

“And that decision required us to leave our carers, leave our family and travel to another state. We did spend time with our son, he was delivered naturally, he had an induced labour, we got to spend time with him but we would have got to spend more time with him had we been able to go through that process here in Ireland.”

“Our family members would have gotten to meet him, we would have had the dignity of having a funeral and a community to stand with us and support us in our loss. Instead we got a jiffy envelope, delivered by a courier a couple of weeks later. That’s unacceptable.”

Later

Edwards: “It’s the responsibility of our legislators to legislate. They also have an obligation to uphold international human rights law. This isn’t imposed upon Ireland. This is something that Ireland signed up to. There was a discussion earlier on in the programme about upholding the law and Ireland is one of those countries that has pledged to uphold international human rights law and we’ll find out very soon whether our Government is going to honour that commitment it made and actually take steps to change our legal environment soon.”

Watch Prime Time back in full here

Meanwhile,

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On TV3’s Tonight With Vincent Browne last night…

During the newspaper review, the panel – Senator Lynn Ruane, Breda O’Brien, of the Iona Institute; Sinéad O’Carroll, of The Journal.ie and Ger Colleran,former editor of the Irish Daily Star – also discussed the UN’s criticism.

From the discussion…

Mick Clifford: “Breda, ‘Cabinet to defy UN on abortion reforms’ [the main headline on today’s Irish Examiner]. This is not going to go away and some people would say all roads to a referendum one way or the other.”

Breda O’Brien: “Well I’m absolutely delighted if that’s an accurate headline in the Irish Examiner because this committee is part of a huge push that there is to kind of, in a sense, the UN treaty say ‘do not give any right to abortion’ but these committees have been pushing this agenda for years. And they’re stuffed with people who share a point of view which is that the baby in the womb does not have equal rights with the mother. And of course they’re going to find that something is cruel and inhumane and degrading, but I had the privilege of accompanying a friend of mine when she had a baby with a life-limiting condition and..”

Clifford: “But there’s stories like that but there’s also the other side…”

Sinead O’Carroll: “Fatal foetal abnormality is different to life-limiting…”

O’Brien: “No, life-limiting condition is the term used by hospice, it’s the term used by…”

O’Carroll: “Fatal foetal abnormality is the term used by doctors when they give diagnoses to women with fatal foetal abnormality…”

O’Brien: “But also, people, I think fatal foetal abnormality is one that people who have had babies with life-limiting conditions have asked to have it removed because it is so offensive. Your child is not a fatal foetal abnormality, no more than somebody with leukaemia is a cancer.”

Ger Colleran: “It’s the condition, not the child…”

O’Brien: “But that’s what, people have actually said in the media, they’ve said things like, ‘the fatal foetal abnormality’ as if that were, it’s a child who has a life-limiting condition…”

Clifford: “Breda, do you believe there’ll be a referendum?”

O’Brien: “I hope that there will be good sense and that people will see that this is a matter of equal rights and that they should leave it as it is.”

Lynne Ruane: “There will be.”

Clifford: “Ok, well, we’re going to have to leave it for that because that’s it now, we’ve run out of time..”

Watch back in full here

Previously: ‘The Ashes Were Unexpectedly Delivered To Her Three Weeks Later By Courier’

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“I believe there is an upper room feeling about the church in many parts of the world today. People cowering behind closed doors, afraid to express opinions, in case it will bring the wrath of the oppressors down on them, but if you focus on witnessing, you have a certain calm about outcomes. Most of the time.

“When I found myself, earlier this year, accused with other people of being a homophobe, for weeks on end, everywhere from our national parliament to our State broadcaster and it continued to the extent that my 15-year-old daughter turned to me and said, ‘Mammy are you safe? Is it safe for you to go out?’ – I had to hold on very tightly to witnessing, not winning.

And in a major irony, the article which sparked off the whole incident was about gay men in the priesthood. And I asked a rhetorical question which was that if every single priest were gay, if they were faithful to their vocation, and actively seeking to do the will of god, what would it matter?

It was a rhetorical question. And this article was what caused a very well-known drag queen to accuse me of homophobia.”

Iona Institute’s Irish Times columnist Breda O’Brien speaking at a Catholic conference in Madrid, Spain in September, 2014.

Rep writes:

“…31 mins. and 42 seconds in, Breda begins to talk about the Pantigate Affair…A very dishonest account of the whole affair….”

Previously: Pantigate on broadsheet

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Breda O Brien of the Iona Institute

Breda O’Brien appeared on RTE R1’s Morning Ireland earlier to debate the same sex marriage referendum with newly wed (in London) Labour TD Dominic Hannigan.

Mrs O’Brien, of the Iona Institute, was asked to share her thoughts on whether she objects to parenting (other than a same sex situation) where children are raised by family members.

Audrey Carville: “Breda O’Brien, for generations in this country, grandmothers have helped their daughters raise their children. Do yo do you object to that?”

Breda O’Brien: “No, and I think one of the really good…”

Carville: “Why, what’s the difference?”

O’Brien: “The reason that I don’t object to that is that our grandmother, helping out in a situation where…”

Carville: “Not helping out, raising. Living with the daughter, raising the child, what’s the difference?”

O’Brien: “The difference is that that doesn’t do anything to a child’s right to a mother and father. That’s actually the difference.”

Carville: “That child doesn’t have, in that instance, they don’t have access to their father. So what is the difference?”

O’Brien: “And we consider that a loss. We don’t normally legislate for…”

Carville: “What is the difference between those two people, raising that child and two lesbians raising a child?”

O’Brien: “The difference is that if a child has come into a relationship, where there are two lesbians, it has come usually by one of two means. One, from a previous relationship and the other is by assisted human reproduction. If it’s assisted human reproduction, it means that a child has been deliberately brought into the world without access to one half of her identity.”

Carville: “But what is the difference for the…”

O’Brien: “Because that doesn’t apply in the case of the grandmother..”

Carville: “…good of the child. The father in the grandmother scenario, the daughter’s partner, the man who fathered the child, he’s not, he’s never been there…”

O’Brien: “Audrey, you’re not suggesting, you’re not suggesting that granny and her daughter get married are you?”

Carville: “What is, no, what is the difference?”

O’Brien: “You can’t see the difference? Do you think we should change the constitution to allow grandmothers and their daughters to get married?”

Carville: “What is the difference in terms of..”

O’Brien: “Do you think we can sort that out?”

Carvile: “…protecting the child and the rights of the child and the good of the child? What is the difference?”

O’Brien: “The difference is if we change the constitution, we are changing that mother/father model. A grandmother, raising a child with her daughter, does nothing to change that model because they’re not asking for rights to be married and to be considered exactly the same as a man and a woman who have brought a child into the world. A grandmother is helping out in a situation where there’s already a loss. Now let me just say, in a situation where the only parents that a child has are two people of the same sex, I think the provisions in the Children Family Bill for Guardianship are excellent, there are a lot of things which are not excellent which would be unconstitutional and I don’t object to that. But we don’t need to redefine marriage in order to achieve those rights, no more than we need to say that granny and daughter need to get married in order to raise the child.”

Transcript of exchange between Breda O’Brien of the Iona Institute and RTE R1 Morning Ireland presenter Audrey Carville earlier

Podcast of show here

Earlier: After Sport

An earlier version of this post misquoted Breda O’Brien. Sorry.

breda_obrien100103412Breda O’Brien of the Iona Institute (top) and Dr Deirdre Madden (UCC)

Earlier, on RTÉ Radio One’s Today with Seán O’Rourke, Seán introduced an item on surrogacy with the following:

Seán O’Rourke: “And that’s Helen Hayes speaking last month about surrogacy. Now after that interview went out we received a call from Breda O’Brien of the Iona Institute expressing concerns about surrogacy. She’s with me now in studio and in our Cork studio, I’m joined by Dr Deirdre Madden, senior lecturer in Medical Law at University College Cork.”

[Later]

Dr Deirdre Madden: “Thus far, there has been no indication that children born through this means [surrogacy] have experienced any psychological problems. I do acknowledge when they do reach adolescence or when they are older that issue may arise. But as I say, for the moment the results are very positive.

Breda O’Brien: “But Deirdre you know those studies have tiny sample numbers, some of them are self-reporting by parents. It’s the parent’s estimation of the difficulties or otherwise of the children.”

Madden: “But this also Breda was introducing the children’s teachers in school and other adult figures in their lives.”

O’Brien: “In some cases the children don’t know as well. In some cases the children weren’t actually aware. I think the best thing we can say about studies is that they’re inconclusive, that they don’t show any evidence one way or the other.”

[Later]

Madden: “I think it is very paternalistic to suggest that women would not be able to enter into this sort of arrangement with full and voluntary consent.”

O’Brien: “In fact, it’s maternalistic. It’s the desire that women would be protected in the situation and the children be protected as well.”

Madden: “Most women don’t actually feel that the children that they’re carrying are their children, particularly but not only where the child is the full genetic child of the intended parents.”

O’Brien: “So you’re thinking of women as vessels then?”

Madden: “No. I’m saying that the women themselves do not consider the child they’re carrying to be theirs.”

O’Brien: “So therefore, they’re just a vessel?”

Madden: “That’s not how they consider it. They consider that they’re giving a wonderful gift to this infertile couple.”

O’Brien: “Which they are but at what price and at what cost and is it not better to follow the example of other European countries? You’re never going to get rid of it completely but you can send out a very strong cultural message that this is not the thing to do.”

Not Breda’s first or probably last time to debate an expert on Radio One.

Listen here.

Download here.

Previously: What The Man From The UN Said

Dr Peter Boylan and Breda O’Brien: The Transcript

Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland

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Irish Times online editor Hugh Linehan is joined by IT columnist and Iona Institute patron Breda O’Brien to discuss the harrowing fallout from the homophobia hoo hah..

Scroll to the 6 minute 40 second mark.

Inside Politics (Irish Times)

Previously: Late De Hate

Leave It Mrs O’Brien

Pic: YouTube

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At time of writing the column does not appear on the paper’s website (which would usually be the case). We will remove this post once that does happen. We are reprinting Mrs O’Brien’s column because it is an important contribution to the homophobia debate and in the public interest that it be made available online.

It may be worth noting that neither Breda O’Brien nor John Waters appear on the list of Irish Times columnists on the paper’s site this evening.

Update: Breda O’Brien’s column is now available on the Irish Times website.

Who would dare to oppose gay marriage and risk being accused of homophobia (Breda O’Brien, Irish Times)

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Breda O’Brien, of the Iona Institute, and Colm O’Gorman, of Amnesty Ireland, appeared on last night’s Late Debate on RTE Radio One.

The programme hosted by Audrey Carville began with a discussion about the recent Saturday Night Show/Miss Panti brouhaha…

Audrey Carville: “Before we get into the substantive discussion tonight, I want to mention the fact that, over the past number of days, RTÉ issued an apology and made a financial settlement to you, Breda, and to a number of others, including the Iona Institute and this followed allegations made on the Saturday Night Show, on television two weeks ago, during an interview with Rory O’Neill, who’s better known as drag queen, Panti Bliss. Now RTÉ have not issued a statement to us about this matter for our programme tonight. But Breda, as far as you’re concerned, has a line now been drawn under this?”

Breda O’Brien: “Yes, I think it’s really important that we have a rational and a calm debate and that people don’t reduce it to hurling insults at people to close down debate. I think RTÉ let its standards slip in that regard but they were big enough to come forward and to apologise and I’m certainly very pleased with that, very pleased to accept the apology and move forward..”

Carville: “Colm, O’Gorman, as an openly gay man, what do you make of all of this?”

Colm O’Gorman: “Well to be honest, I’m, I’m, well, to put it simply, I’m rather stunned by where all of this has gotten to and I don’t understand how we’re ever going to have a reasoned, or reasonable debate, if we can’t challenge each other’s viewpoints and even question what those viewpoints might be based upon. As it happens, I didn’t see the programme but when I saw it being reported, and some of the comments, that were being attributed to Rory, in the programme, I was lucky enough to grab before it was, on foot of legal action by Breda and others, removed and censored from the public airwaves. So I went into it and I listened to it and I have to say, I thought it was one of the most considered, inclusive, insightful explorations of how we are all capable of holding views that are discriminatory and that can cause us to make statements that are hurtful, that are damaging, that are destructive of other people. And what I heard Rory say is that we’re all capable of holding homophobic or racist, or xenophobic views and that we occasionally need to check ourselves, now I think that’s a really important discussion that we need to have. You know, to be honest, I don’t understand why anyone feels enormously insulted by being accused of being homophobic. I mean I’m a gay man and I’ve certainly been guilty of holding homophobic views – both views that I held about myself but also views I held about other sections of the LGBT community and other people who live lives in ways I perhaps didn’t understand.”

Carville: “You’re saying we’re all capable of being bias?”

O’Gorman: “We’re all capable of bias. We’re all capable of holding views that are based on discriminatory views, or internalised bigotry that we’ve taken on in other ways and I simply do not understand how challenging people, to examine the basis upon which they put forward certain arguments is defamatory and, you know, equally, quite frankly, I don’t think..People have a right, I think, to express views that other people might be offended by. Nobody has a right not to be offended. And I will defend Breda’s right and anybody else’s right to say things that I find offensive but I think I also have a right to name them as offensive and to seek to have a clear, rational, reasonable discussion about that.”

Carville: “Do you want to come back on that, Breda?”

O’Brien: “If it had been a case that it was talking about, in general, about all of us examining our consciences, I don’t think that I would have been, and other people would have been, in discussions with RTÉ. What it was about was naming a specific individual who was not there to defend herself and another individual who was not there to defend himself. It was claiming bad faith on their part, that they were, that my position, which is that a child, where possible, should be reared by their own mother and father, is now deemed homophobic commentary. RTÉ obviously felt that they had something to apologise for and the reason that they did so is because the legal definition of homophobia is that you have a fear and loathing, and suspicion of people who are gay, which is an appalling thing to throw at somebody. And I…it was then compounded later on by people in the Irish media, in their columns, saying that people who are against marriage equality, if you want to use that term, that people who are against that, are people who are responsible for gay people being beaten, murdered, fired from their jobs and that there should be a defamation watchdog set up so that people couldn’t express these views. Now this is very far from a rational and calm debate. This is actually going way into the territory of saying that we will declare your views out of order before you even begin. And I don’t think the Irish people want that. Like, during referendums regarding abortion, people were immoderate on my side of the fence and I always called them out when they were, when they used appalling expressions. I think we have a right in this debate to have the same level of respect, mutual respect and that you don’t label people and that you don’t dismiss their good faith. And, really, I think, I came here tonight to talk about Catholic education, I think it would be really good if we got onto that debate.”

O’Gorman: “Well..”

Carville: “Just briefly, Colm..”

O’Gorman: “Yeah, absolutely. I do think this has been a very, very damaging incident. and I really do think RTE needs to explain the basis upon which they felt entitled or required to pay damages from taxpayers’ funds on the basis of this. If this was indeed defamatory then indeed the rationale or the basis, upon which RTE believes this was defamatory, needs to be explained.”

Meanwhile:

Listen in full here.

Eamonn Farrell/Photocall Ireland, YouTube

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breda Bros writes:

Could you highlight today’s press strategy of the Irish conservative control tower?
David Quinn (top),  Iona Institute, in the Irish Independent criticising the free vote of FF on the grounds of conscience. And Breda O’Brien, Iona Institute, in the  Irish Times criticising FG for their party whip system on the grounds of conscience

 

FF leader could learn from JFK speech on conscience (David Quinn, Irish Independent)

Party whip system prioritises loyalty at the expense of conscience (Breda O’Brien, Irish Times)

breda

Iona Institute’s Breda O’Brien (above).

She’s no fundamentalist.

“Christians and other believers are often derided for believing in a God or gods on faith alone.
However, thoughtful believers say they make a leap of faith based on a reasonable, though not definitive, level of proof. They don’t endorse blind faith or dogma that flies in the face of evidence, a stance they consider to be fideism, not faith. Those who operate on faith alone are what most of us call fundamentalists.
Scientists and rationalists pride themselves on avoiding faith-based dogma by strenuously adhering only to empirical evidence.
Yet we have the extraordinary situation where people who believe that abortion should be available in Ireland are ignoring the best available scientific evidence, in favour of a faith-based dogma that abortion is somehow good for women when they are in crisis.”

 

Evidence showing ‘no mental health benefit to abortion’ cannot be ignored (Breda O’Brien, Irish Times)

Previously: Dr Peter Boylan and Breda O’Brien: The Transcript

A Little Light Reading

Iona Lot Of Airtime

Pic: (ABCandX / YouTube)

Boylanbreda_obrien

Former Master of Holles Street Hospital in Dublin, Dr Peter Boylan, top, and Breda O’Brien, above, a patron of Iona Institute and Irish Times columnist, were among the guests on RTÉ’s Marian Finucane this morning.

They spoke about the death and subsequent inquest of Savita Halappanavar.

During their discussion, Dr Boylan accused Ms O’Brien of revising history.

Here’s how it unfolded:

Marian Finucane: “Explain how you got involved in the hearings in Galway, last week.”

Dr Peter Boylan: “The coroner wrote to me and asked me would I review the notes and the statements and issue a report to him, so that’s it basically.”

Finucane: “And that was it. And were you there for the whole thing?”

Boylan: “No, I got the transcripts every night but I wasn’t present. I only went down to give my expert evidence on Thursday.”

Finucane: “Right. And your conclusions?”

Boylan: “My conclusions are that if she’d had a termination on the Monday or the Tuesday, she would now be alive. That by the time…”

Finucane: “This is Savita. Just to…”

Boylan: “Yes. By the time a termination became legally realistic prospect, she was becoming seriously ill. And even if they’d started a termination on the morning of the Wednesday that it was too late at that stage. I did identify a number of deficiencies in the care but none of them individually contributed to her death, in my opinion. And, the question of a surgical termination was brought up in some of the media, during the course of discussions since the finish of the inquest. And I don’t want to be graphic about what a surgical termination means at 17 weeks for the live foetus but there’s a very high likelihood that she would have died as a consequence of having had a surgical termination at that stage because…”

Finucane: “On the Monday or the Tuesday?”

Boylan: “No. On the Wednesday.”

Finucane: “No.”

Boylan: “You couldn’t do a termination on the Monday or the Tuesday in this country. It’s just, it was not legal.”

Finucane: “Yeah, I must have misheard, I thought I heard people, on both sides, saying that if a miscarriage was inevitable that then there would…”

Boylan: “The clinical circumstances in which she was, with ruptured membranes at 17 weeks, the chances of survival for that baby were absolutely very small, less than 10%. There are incidences however, well-recognised in this country and internationally where babies in those circumstances can survive. They get to 34 weeks maybe or even later…”

Finucane: “34? Yeah but she was 17?”

Boylan: “She was 17. Yes but a pregnancy, even with ruptured membranes, can continue. It’s highly unlikely. It’s not inevitable that she would have a miscarriage. Now what would have happened in another country is that on the ward round, when she ruptured her membranes, the dismal outlook for the baby would have been discussed with her. And her input into the management, and her husband’s input into the management, would have been taken into account. We can’t do that here. And what would have happened is she would have said one of two things. One: ‘I’d like this pregnancy to continue as long as possible as I dearly want a baby and we want to do everything possible’. That might be say in the circumstances where the mother is in her late 30s/40s, it’s an IVF pregnancy and so on. Not very much different. Or she might, she could said ‘Look no, the outlook is so dismal, I’d like just to have, get this pregnancy over with, in other words terminate it, and then move on and perhaps get pregnant again soon. Her wishes would have been taken into account in any other country. Now what would have happened then is that they would have said to her ‘Look, have a think about this because these are very big decisions.”

Finucane: “Sure are.”

Boylan: “And they would have come back to her the next day, or later the same day, or they might be absolutely certain what they wanted to do. And then, whatever it is that they wished would be undertaken. In any other country.”

Finucane: “Again, just listening to the, to the evidence, I presume every person operates to the guidelines, you know, according to the law.”

Boylan: “We have to.”

Finucane: “Yeah, yes, yeah. But the notion of percentages.”

Boylan: “Yes.”

Finucane: “Of, will you die, won’t you die…”

Boylan: “Yes.”

Finucane: “Does that happen? A lot?”

Boylan: “No. And we cannot, as doctors, be expected to do our ward rounds with a calculator in one hand and the law in another hand. We have to be given the liberty to do what we feel is best for a patient and in this…These circumstances are the only circumstances in obstetric care where a woman’s wishes are not taken into account. Where she has no input into her care. Now if you think of any other sort of situation like that you end up talking about the Taliban. Where else are women denied an input into their care? In what other clinical situation? I can’t identify any. Women are very much involved in their care in obstetrics, in decisions to induce labour, decisions about Caesarian sections, decisions about all sorts of things. And that’s how it should be. But in this circumstances, they are not allowed. And that’s the law.”

Finucane: “Breda, how did, how did we end up here?”

Breda O’Brien: “I’m really alarmed at a couple of things that Peter has said. First of all that the law would not have allowed intervention on Monday because John Bonner, who would be universally acknowledged to be deeply conservative on this, said he would have gone, he would have been in there like a light.”

Boylan: “That’s incorrect.”

O’Brien: “Em. He’s not present to..what he..this is..”

Boylan: “I was on Prime Time with him there last night I think it was…”

O’Brien: “What he said was…”

Boylan: “Friday night. And that’s not correct what he said. He said he would wait until she was ill and then he would have no hesitation in intervening.”

O’Brien: “Can I clarify, Peter?”

Boylan: “He was very clear about that because I picked him up on that.”

O’Brien: “Can I clarify, Peter? When I said he would have been in like a light I was talking about in terms of the care. The care is the crucial issue here.  I spoke to three obstetricians over the week, two in person and one by email to clarify this point.”

Finucane: “I should clarify that you yourself are a patron of Iona, just for the record.”

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