Savita Halappanavar - Failure to lead has cost us dearly

Enda Kenny is the seventh man to be Taoiseach since a 1983 referendum endorsed an amendment to the Constitution recognising the equal right to life of both mother and child.

Like each of those predecessors he was well aware, long before he took office, that the abortion file in the Taoiseach’s in-tray demanded action. However, just like Garret FitzGerald, Charles Haughey, John Bruton, Albert Reynolds, Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen, he hoped that his successor, or maybe even one of their successors, would deal with the issue. Anyone but him, or them. The can was, inevitably, kicked down that long and winding road pockmarked with evasion and hypocrisy.

Like his six predecessors Mr Kenny did not regard it as a leadership or a pressing social issue. Neither did he, or they, think that dodging the unavoidable impinged on his, or their, political integrity. None of these men accepted the issue had to be resolved no matter what the consequences. None of them recognised it could not be shirked no matter how difficult or divisive.