Committee members’ exemplary conduct brings referendum closer

Wednesday’s votes felt like a massive step forward for Irish women’s reproductive rights, writes Alison O’Connor.

I WAS wrong. I’m delighted I was wrong. Just months ago I virtually wrote off the prospects of the Oireachtas committee on the Eighth Amendment, and the ability of our elected politicians to take up where the Citizens’ Assembly had left off. But they did exactly that and more.

Having so closely observed the work of the Assembly I fretted about the Leinster House politicians who didn’t even want to serve on the committee, that they would toss around the citizen’s proposals like a political football, that they would indulge in pointless and harmful duplication and attempt to rerun the same territory. It was impossible to imagine assembly chair Judge Mary Laffoy having anything but mixed feelings as she handed over her report to the joint committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution.