Independents 4 Change TDs Mick Wallace and Clare Daly
Further to Health Minister Simon Harris’ claim that a bill proposed by Independents 4 Change TD Mick Wallace – which would allow for abortion in cases of fatal foetal abnormality and is identical to a bill previously proposed by TD Clare Daly – is unconstitutional…
For years, we have heard a litany of Government ministers and TDs offer sympathy to the couples involved, wring their hands, and agree that “something” must be done. But they have done nothing. Doing nothing is simply not an option anymore.
Roughly two diagnoses of fatal foetal abnormality are made in Holles Street alone each week. The Liverpool Women’s Hospital sees between two and four Irish women every week, with a five-week waiting list. Each week’s delay is subjecting more and more people to cruel and inhumane treatment.
When the bill was moved last year, the Government relied on the advice of the Attorney General, which suggested that it was unconstitutional as a result of the Eighth Amendment. They are again seeking her opinion this time round.
I want to see that opinion published. It cannot be used as a fig leaf to cover the inaction of politicians.
The truth is that all it is is an opinion. Actual unconstitutionality can only be determined by the courts. So why not allow the bill to pass, get the President under Article 26 to refer it to the Supreme Court?
The Constitution allows 60 days to have the matter determined. If they agree it is compatible with the Constitution, then we can — at least in these circumstances — end the inhumane treatment of Irish women.
If they find it is not constitutional, then we will only be in the situation that we are in now.
You may recall how last year Independents 4 Change TD Clare Daly proposed a bill which would have allowed abortions in cases of fatal foetal abnormalities.
It was voted down 104 to 20 with Government TDs at the time claiming it was unconstitutional, following advice from Attorney General Máire Whelan.
You may also recall Legal Coffee Drinker’s take on the matter.
At the time, LCD said:
“…it is not possible to say with certainty, or even as a matter of probability, that the Bill is unconstitutional. Many Bills, including those put forward by governments, have constitutional question marks hanging over them. That this will happen is expressly recognised by the Constitution itself, Article 26 of which provides that the President, before signing a Bill, may refer it to the Supreme Court to have a decision taken as to its constitutionality.”
“To regard possible unconstitutionality, falling short of certainty, or even probability, as a ground for not voting for legislation would have ruled out much of the most important legislation passed in this jurisdiction. Constitutional rights – even the right to life of the unborn – are not absolute; nor, in this case, is the question of unconstitutionality. Indeed, it could be argued that, if anything, it is in the public interest that we get the opportunity to hear more, from the Supreme Court, on the meaning and scope of Article 40.3.3.”
Further to this, fellow Independents 4 Change TD Mick Wallace is planning to propose an identical bill in the Dáil next Thursday, June 30.
There have been reports that three Independent Alliance ministers – Shane Ross, Finian McGrath and John Halligan – have been planning to support Mr Wallace.
But today, on RTÉ’s News At One, Health Minister Simon Harris told presenter Richard Crowley that Mr Wallace’s bill is… unconstitutional.
Richard Crowley: “The 8th amendment. What’s happening with the Mick Wallace bill which was to come into the Dáil next Thursday?”
Simon Harris: “Well I fully understand what Deputy Wallace is trying to do and I’ve said very clearly, on the record, that I find the current situation facing parents experiencing fatal foetal abnormalities in this country to be utterly unacceptable. But I am duty-bound, as Minister for Health, to make sure that any actions we take are constitutional, that they’re legal and that they’ll actually have an impact.”
“I’ve been consulting the Attorney General, in relation to Deputy Wallace’s bill. This bill is pretty identical to a previous bill tabled in the Oireachtas last year and the advice available to me, and the advice available I will be making available to Government colleagues is that the bill is not constitutional and that arises from the fact that there is a very explicit protection of the right to life of the unborn in our constitution.”
“So, really, these issues need to be addressed through a Citizens’ Assembly whereby they can be discussed, a proper debate can take place, expert views can be heard and ultimately that is the right forum. So as I very much respect what Deputy Wallace is trying to do, I won’t be in a position to accept the bill because, quite frankly, it won’t make the meaningful impact that he thinks it will because it’s not constitutional.”
Former health minister, now Minister for Social Protection Leo Varadkar
Ahead of the Dáil voting on Thursday, June 30, on a referendum bill proposed by Independents 4 Change TD Mick Wallace, which would allow for abortions in the case of fatal foetal abnormalities…
Newstalk reports:
[Former Health] Minister Leo Varadkar says the 8th Amendment was not considered fully and properly before being added to the Constitution.
Leo Varadkar says considering the repeal of the amendment should not be rushed.
However he conceded that it cannot be put on the long finger either.
“Part of the reason why our abortion laws have given us so much trouble in this country is because we put an amendment into the Constitution in 1983 without considering it fully and properly,” he suggested.!
Last night in the Dáil, during the Adjournment Debate, Independents 4 Change TDs Clare Daly and Mick Wallace addressed Tánaiste and Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald.
They were speaking about Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan’s representation at the O’Higgins Commission of Investigation in respect of Sgt Maurice McCabe.
Ms Daly and Mr Wallace spoke in the Dáil before transcripts of Ms O’Sullivan’s legal counsel Colm Smyth SC speaking before Judge O’Higgins were revealed on RTÉ’s Prime Time last night.
The transcripts revealed that Mr Smyth initially told Mr O’Higgins: “My instructions are to challenge the integrity of Sgt McCabe and his motivation.”
The two men then had the following exchange:
O’Higgins: “…An attack on somebody’s credibility and his motivation or integrity is something that really doesn’t form part of this inquiry. It would be necessary for you to go further and say that the complaints and the actions of Sgt McCabe were motivated by… that is motivation was dishonest or wrong…In other words that he made these allegations not in good faith but because he was motivated by malice, by some such motive and that impinges on his integrity. If those are your instructions from the Commissioner, so be it.”
Smyth: “So be it. That is the position judge.”
O’Higgins: “Those are your…”
Smyth: “Yes. As the evidence will demonstrate judge…[later] this isn’t something I’m pulling out of the sky, judge, I mean I can only act on instructions.”
Later, in November – after Sgt McCabe produced a transcript ofhis meeting in Mullingar with two gardaí – Mr Smyth told Justice O’Higgins that, in fact, he, on behalf of Ms O’Sullivan, was not challenging Sgt McCabe’s integrity but just his credibility and motivation.
Mr Smyth said he erred earlier when he said ‘integrity’.
Further to this…
Clare Daly: “I listened to the Tánaiste during Leaders’ Questions with a mixture of disbelief and awe. Does she really believe that the questions about the conduct of the Garda Commissioner are going to go away? Does she really believe that, by saying that the Commissioner made it clear that she supported Maurice McCabe, it is the end of the matter?”
“What the Commissioner’s statement actually said was that she had never regarded Maurice McCabe as malicious. Fair play to her, that is very nice, but it is not the issue at hand. The issue in front of the public is that the Garda Commissioner’s legal team, allegedly on her instruction, attempted to mislead the commission deliberately by entering false information in order to challenge the motivation and credibility of Maurice McCabe.”
“The fact that legal counsel has stated that the attempt to challenge his integrity was its idea and not the Commissioner’s does not make any difference. It is reminiscent of the former Minister, Alan Shatter, throwing Oliver Connolly under the bus.”
“The commission was told that two senior gardaí would give direct evidence to the effect that Maurice McCabe was present at a meeting and stated that he operated under malice. It was only when irrefutable evidence was presented showing it to be false that the allegation was withdrawn.”
“If the Tánaiste does not have a problem with this, we are in even bigger trouble than I believed. There is an immediate crisis of trust and confidence in the Commissioner. Public statements uttered by her in support of whistleblowers have been contradicted by her actions behind the scenes.”
“The Tánaiste should not be surprised about that because we are not. Eighteen times since the Tánaiste became Minister, Deputy Wallace and I have tabled the issue of Commissioner O’Sullivan’s treatment of the whistleblowers Mr. Keith Harrison and Mr. Nick Kehoe.”
“The Tánaiste has done nothing. Will she launch a full investigation into the Commissioner’s actions in accordance with the Garda Síochána (Policing Authority and Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, under which she can investigate and remove the Commissioner for actions that discredit her office?”
“Will she commission the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Office, GSOC, to launch an investigation? If not, why not?
I am reminded of a memorable contribution by Deputy Wallace in the Dáil when he told the former Minister that it was time for the latter to go and to take the then Commissioner with him. It is obvious that it is time for the current Commissioner to go. Unless the Tánaiste acts, the Commissioner will take her with her.”
Mick Wallace: “If Maurice McCabe had not made a recording, the judge would have been compelled to believe the two officers and Maurice McCabe would have been destroyed. This development was not even mentioned in the O’Higgins report. Surely, that undermines the report’s integrity.”
“We still do not know whether Ms Nóirín O’Sullivan’s legal team, under her direction, handed documents to the commission that contained a false statement. That is supposedly a criminal offence. This is a serious matter.”
“I find it difficult to believe that, when there is so much discussion about doing things differently in all aspects of politics, Fianna Fáil does not want to know about this situation. It just wants the issue to go away as well. This is shocking.”
“What the Commissioner says in public is different to what is happening on the ground.Keith Harrison and Nick Kehoe have been treated abysmally for two years. Both are out sick now. One gets less than €300 per week and the other gets nothing. Every effort has been made to hound them out of their jobs.”
“It is two years since Mr. Harrison tried to get a proper hearing and he has only had one proper meeting with GSOC. GSOC requested Mr. Kehoe’s file after a poor internal Garda investigation. The Garda was given 30 days to deliver it but still has not done so.”
“Ms Nóirín O’Sullivan asserts that dissent is not disloyalty, but that is not true. Now it is being claimed that the question of integrity was not raised and the senior counsel is being thrown under the bus or is taking one for the team.”
“The Commissioner is not even rowing back on how she questioned Maurice McCabe’s motivation. She has not rowed back on the fact that she was questioning his character. Who in God’s name would be a whistleblower? She is not fit to be the Commissioner.”
“Nothing has changed. It is as it was. We will not improve or change how we do policing in Ireland until we change the hierarchy and start from scratch.”
From top: Environment Minister Alan Kelly and Independents 4 Change TD Mick Wallace in a meeting of the Committee on Housing and Homelessness this morning
This morning.
During a meeting of the Committee on Housing and Homelessness.
Independents 4 Change TD Mick Wallace spoke about land banking in Ireland.
“You talk about the vacant site levy as if, I know you say that you’d have liked to have brought it in in 2017 and you’d like 7% and, well I’m glad to hear that, but the vacant site levy that was brought in before Christmas – do you not agree that it’s absolutely a joke. It’s going to bring in so little, it’s not going to speed up the development of sites. Are you going to tell me otherwise?”
“I mean if a fella has borrowed the money to actually land bank, you’re not asking him to even pay tax on it, you’re not asking, you’re not hitting him with a levy. It’s .75% if he owes more than 75% of the money and course he owes more than 75% of the money – he’d be off his head if he wasn’t borrowing to acquire land for land banking.”
“So do you not admit that the State has refused to actually address the problem with land banking because that is the fact and it is probably the biggest problem in terms of affordability around private housing in Ireland: land banking.
“I see a site sold in Clontarf last week for, I think it’s, 27 units. The builder, the developer paid over €220,000 per unit for the site. Over 220 a unit? Now? I mean, so we haven’t dealt with it and I mean it’s an absolute scandal to the State has never dealt with it.”
“…This country is full of small sites and Dublin city has loads of them.. Do you not admit minister that there’s a huge concentration on the part of the local authorities on the big bang effect of big sites. Why aren’t we, why aren’t we getting the small sites going? Why don’t we get the small builder back in?”
“The small builders, there are small builders all over the country dying to do work. And you know what, I’ll tell you something else as well, they’re not looking for a profit of €20,000 – €40,000 a unit. The builders that I know are probably different to the builders that Frank Daly [of NAMA] might know. They’re not looking for that. I tell you what – if they made between €5,000 and €10,000 profit per unit, they’d be delighted with themselves, they’d be more than happy.”
“I’m asking you minister, is it possible to actually activate a lot of the smaller sites and get the smaller builder back in but then we’re back to the finance problem again. Can the State start organising the finance for them? Because the banks won’t give it them, the banks don’t want to lend to him.
“Most of the building that’s going on in this town today is being done by investment funds and the Irish banks are not even funding it but these guys come up with their own money and they’re dominating what’s being built at the moment. You have the Kennedy Wilsons and the [inaudible] now building but they’re only building for the rental market – so they don’t have to worry about selling them at a low price.”
Yesterday’s Sunday Independent reported how the Irish Red Cross has been contacted by 800 people in Ireland who wish to offer accommodation for refugees.
Further to this…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psuUSWm21cI
Independent TD Mick Wallace speaking in the Dáil on Thursday, following a recent trip to the makeshift refugee camp in Calais, France.
During his speech, he implored Ireland to do more for the people languishing in Calais and Dunkirk.
He said:
Last weekend, Deputy Clare Daly, a solicitor called Gary Daly from Dublin, and I went to Calais for the weekend and spent three days there – two days in the Jungle camp in Calais and a day in Dunkirk. It is hard to be well after what we witnessed.
It is hard to be well thinking about the role that the EU is playing in the issue of refugees at the moment. It is bad enough that Ireland has been complicit by allowing Shannon to be used as a US military base. We seem to be very comfortable with it – 2.5 million troops have gone through Shannon since 2001.
Anyone who pretends to think that this is nothing to do with the refugee problem is living in cuckoo land. We have been complicit in the destruction of the homes of millions of people.
We saw the end result of it in Calais and Dunkirk last weekend. It is just horrific where these people are today. It is horrific that the EU has played such a poor role in it. Last year, we had the release valve of Germany doing the right thing and taking close to 1 million people. They cannot do it again this year. There will be a serious problem.
The EU can block all the borders it likes but the refugees will come.
In terms of the Greece-Turkey situation it will be a bit more difficult for them now there but it means there will be more of them on the Mediterranean this summer.
The deal the EU did with Turkey and Greece is shameful. We met Kurds in Dunkirk. The notion that Turks will actually arrive on islands off Greece and be forced back to Turkey is beyond thinking about.
We talked to a guy called Beshwar Hassan who is the head of a refugee council in Dunkirk. These people are afraid of their life of the Turks because of what the Turks have been doing to them.
Today in Turkey it is possible for ISIS to get direct access to hospitals and there are special supermarkets that it can access. How in God’s name could the EU take the position of allowing Turkey to play this role? We pay them for doing it.
This is not the answer to the migrant problem. Turkey will make things worse for these people and it will not solve the problem that is arriving in Europe. We are still saying we will not take people who have arrived in Europe and that they will have to be assessed outside of Europe.
We met kids of 11, 14 and 15 years of age, a lot of whom were Afghan. Calais is dominated by Afghans. There is a fear in Ireland that a lot of these people are terrorists and could cause trouble here. Afghanistan is in bits.
The pretence that things are sorted in Afghanistan is total nonsense. We met a lot of Afghans over the weekend and most of them were running from the Taliban and from ISIS. This time last year, they reckon that there were 100 ISIS fighters in Afghanistan.
Last week, they claimed that there are 10,000 of them. The Afghans that we met were at pains to point out that ISIS is now more powerful in Afghanistan than the Taliban and that the Government is a sideshow.
Most of the people we met in Calais who had to run had nothing to do with the Government, the UN or the US army, but some of their cousins had. They are afraid of their life of the Taliban and ISIS, both of which said that their cousins would have to stop doing this, that or the other or that they had done this, that or the other in the past and will pay a price for it.
They have had no choice but to get out of the country. They told us of an Afghan who, after spending six months in Calais, just could not take it anymore. He had mentally had enough of it and decided that he was just going to hand himself in and go home. He went home and was dead in two weeks. It is not a safe country to return anyone who has run out of the place. It is out of the question.
I think the Irish Government should look at the camps in Calais and Dunkirk. We have met many good people there – people who have a lot to add to society here. It would be such a gesture to go over there, process people, take them from these camps and bring them to Ireland to settle them. It would mean so much and it would be a beautiful thing to do.
From top: Results of a Red C poll; Independent TDs Mick Wallace and Clare Daly (centre), with Dr John Lannon (left) and Ed Horgan (right), of Shannonwatch at a press conference in Buswells Hotel, Dublin earlier today
Independent TDs Mick Wallace and Clare Daly released the results of a Red C poll earlier today, which show over half the population don’t agree with Ireland’s current military relationship with the United States – which uses Shannon Airport to refuel.
Some 55% of those polled say they don’t believe that the Irish Government should allow the US to use the Limerick airport for military purposes.
Mr Wallace and Ms Daly held a press conference earlier today with Dr John Lannon and Ed Horgan, of Shannonwatch, at the Buswells Hotel, Dublin, to discuss the poll’s results.
Clare Daly said:
“A country with a policy of positive neutrality would not facilitate the massive, devastating displacement of tens of millions of people through wars whose only purpose is to keep the gears of the military-industrial complex oiled.”
“It would not find itself in a state of absolute moral abjection when it agreed to accept only the tiniest fraction of those made homeless and stateless by wars it had abetted. We need to put meat on the bones of our neutrality, to actively and vigorously work against war and destruction, against the arms trade, against the absolute devastation of so many lives in pursuit of imperial power and wealth?”
“Until we enshrine a policy of neutrality in our Constitution, and make it so that our neutrality is something that is real, positive, and active, we cannot and will not play that role”.
Mick Wallace said:
“Since 2001, the US Military and their allies have been responsible for the deaths of over 2 million citizens in Afghanistan and Iraq alone. Mindless destruction of the Middle East region & beyond has seen the displacement of over 30 million people and an unprecedented refugee crisis in Europe today.
“It’s long past time that Ireland stopped facilitating this horror by refusing to allow Shannon Airport to be used for any military purposes. We need a change of direction – It should start with the new Government. It’s time for Ireland to work for peace, not war.”
Ed Horgan of Shannonwatch said:
“Shannon airport has been used, or misused by the US military, with the approval of successive Irish Government’s since October 2001. In the meantime over three million armed US troops have transited through Shannon on their way to and from wars and military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria and elsewhere.”
“In addition US military aircraft have transported unknown quantities of munitions and other war materials through Shannon airport but the Irish Government has been repeatedly denying that these aircraft are carrying weapons and munitions. Irish neutrality needs to be urgently restored to prevent Irish complicity in crimes against humanity”.
Dr John Lannon of the University of Limerick and Shannonwatch, said:
“Ireland’s failure to uphold national and international law at Shannon is shameful. The routine transit of armed troops to and from war zones is in contravention of the Hague Convention on Neutrality.”
“The authorities have failed in their responsibilities under the Convention Against Torture by not investigating rendition planes at Shannon. And they also turn a blind eye to the fact that the US military aircraft landing at Shannon are likely to be carrying people who are guilty of war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Under the principle of international jurisdiction, these should be investigated and prosecuted.”
Independent TD Mick Wallace and BBC One’s Mark Carruthers
Yes.
Independent TD Mick Wallace will be speaking to Mark Carruthers about Stormont’s report on the sale of Nama’s Northern Ireland property loan portfolio.
At 10.45pm on BBC One.
UPDATE: Newstalk’s George Hook, Una Mullally, of the Irish Times, and Claire McGing, of Maynooth University, will also feature.
