Dáil committee to examine potential changes to abortion legislation
The committee will assess and add to the work of the Citizens’ Assembly, which has been examining whether to repeal the eighth amendment of the Constitution.
This amendment, made in 1983, gives the right to life to the unborn and effectively bans abortions.
The Dáil will vote and pass a motion on setting up the Oireachtas committee but its members, from different political parties and groups, will not be nominated or agreed until next week.
The same model used to set up the housing, health, and water committees will be applied in establishing the new joint committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution.
The 20-member committee will comprise 16 TDs and four senators: Five government party members, four members from Fianna Fáil, two from Sinn Féin, one from Labour, and others from Solidarity-People Before Profit, Independents4-Change, the Rural Independents, and the Social Democrats or Green Party.
The chairperson will not be decided until the members nominated by groups are announced.
One of the priorities of the committee will be to agree its work, including the types of medical or legal experts and lobby groups it might call.
The committee is expected to sit after June and be given until the end of the year to produce a final report.
It will take receipt of and examine the Citizens’ Assembly report on abortion laws, which is expected to make recommendations to Government in June.
The assembly’s final set of hearings will be held on the weekend of April 22 and 23.
Groups both for and against changing the Eighth Amendment have been organising to campaign and are expected to be involved in further debates and marches once the committee begins its work.
A number of recent opinion polls have suggested the public is supportive of some changes to the current abortion laws, but for a variety of different reasons.
Given the timeline and work of the new Oireachtas committee, it is expected that any possible referendum would not be held until the start or middle of next year.
The committee will make a number of recommendations before the end of 2017, which will be voted on by the Dáil and which will then decide if there is a referendum on Ireland’s abortion laws.
