Tag Archives: David Davin-Power

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RTÉ journalist David Davin Power on tonight’s Six One

Yesterday.

The Citizens’ Assembly voted by 52 votes to 29 (or 64 per cent) to allow access to the procedure with no restriction on reasons.

Of the 52 who voted for this access, 25 stated abortion should be available up to 12 weeks’ gestation, 23 voted for a 22-week limit, while four said there should be no restriction on gestational age.

Further to this.

Tonight, on RTÉ’s Six One news.

RTÉ journalist David Davin Power spoke to Sharon Ní Bheoláin about the results of yesterday’s Citizens’ Assembly.

Sharon Ní Bheoláin: “We’ve been kicking this can, this most difficult and contentious of issues down the road for decades, David. Has the time come where we’re finally going to deal with it?”

David Davin Power: “Sharon, we might be approaching the end game but, as always, the timing is critical. The first thing to say is that the very liberal package of recommendations from the Citizens’ Assembly took people very much by surprise here. There was astonishment across all parties that they had recommended something that, it has to be said, is politically unsaleable.

“Only around 24% of the electorate, in the last comparable opinion poll, backed a regime that is that liberal. So, the task of this committee that will be meeting from June onwards is essentially to water down these proposals to the point that they’re not politically toxic. Because if these, if this package was put to the people, the view in Leinster House, certainly is, that it would surely fail.

“But, of course, the timing and the timescale is a problem because, with the best will in the world, this committee, if it sits in June and reports in September, if it works through the summer, there’ll be very limited legislative time. And the Dáil returns in October, we have the budget, we have the social welfare bill, so, effectively, the first time we could contemplate having any referendum on this is next year, maybe around April next year.”

“And, of course, that’s the time when you could be facing a general election, if the package between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil unravels. but one thing I have detected around Leinster House today is that there does seem to be, there does seem to be a will to crack on with this now. If only to make sure that the issue is disposed of before that general election but ultimately this will be a problem for a new Taoiseach and, potentially, a new Government.”

Abortion should be legal for all women, says Citizens’ Assembly (Ellen Coyne, The Times Ireland edition)

Watch back here

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David Davin Power

It’s a bottle of smoke.

A non-story

Important people told him.

It’s hard to see how we are going to get of the bottom of this. Now the Opposition want the legal instructions which the Commissioner gave to her legal team to be disclosed but where would that end? After all, would that mean that other legal instructions, say that Maurice McCabe gave to his team, would have to be disclosed in turn?

And it really is a big ask in any situation to request that people disclose what they said to their lawyers in the course of proceedings or a Commission of Inquiry of whatever.

But, as things stand, what we do know from leaked transcripts is that there was an initial suggestion by the lawyer for the Commissioner that malice would have been part of the motivation attributed to Maurice McCabe but then, when he was questioned by the judge, some months later, another transcript, piece of transcript that’s leaked shows that he withdrew that effectively and said he simply wanted to question Sgt McCabe’s motivation and credibility which is bad enough when you think about it.

… the whole thing is really overly complicated by various disclosures and can be boiled down to what the Commissioner felt about Maurice McCabe at the time she was talking to her lawyers in advance of the O’Higgins commission.

Now I don’t know how much further we’re going to get because nobody is suggesting that the full transcript which would be voluminous of the commission is being published because that would call into question how people would behave in front of any future tribunals.

So I think we would probably have to wait until the Dáil debate on the O’Higgins report itself which we think will be next week. The Taoiseach will have to choose his words very carefully in relation to Alan Shatter, in relation to Maurice McCabe, in relation to Noirin O’Sullivan.

And he’ll also have to deal with the findings and the recommendations of the commission in relation to very questionable behaviour of gardaí in Baileboro which sadly has been somewhat obscured by the politics controversies.

RTÉ Political Correspondent David Davin-Power speaking on News At One this afternoon.

Readers may note Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan’s legal counsel made his withdrawal after Sgt Maurice McCabe gave Justice O’Higgins a transcript of a recording of the meeting he held with two gardaí in Mullingar.

Good times.

Previously: Clarifying Matters

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