Drafting legislation for the X Case

Posted on January 16, 2013 by

A few more thoughts on my Irish Examiner column today, on why X Case legislation must include the abortion test, which can be found here.

Considering the government has announced its intention to proceed with X Case legislation, I contacted the Taoiseach’s office to query if he welcomed Ms Creighton’s intervention. I was told that Ms Creighton’s announcement was a decision for herself but government policy was clear, that it intended introducing legislation with a suicide test, and had been reiterated by Enda Kenny on a number of occasions, most recently on Sunday in an interview with RTE’s This Week programme.

I also contacted Ms Creighton’s office on Monday morning and asked the following questions: what legal basis she felt if it was possible to omit suicide as a grounds for abortion from legislation; if she felt it was helpful to draft this legislation when it’s at odds with government policy and, finally, if she intended to vote against any legislation that includes an abortion test. Regrettably, I haven’t received a response from the Minister, yet anyway.

In any event, it is clear that Ms Creighton’s draft legislation will be both legally and politically unsound. As former supreme court justice Catherine McGuinness said, at the Oireachtas abortion hearings, it is not possible to excise parts of the X Case decision without have a referendum, something that Ms Creighton, to my knowledge, has never suggested.

The debate now must move to the framing of the mooted abortion legislation and there seems to be some consensus that consultant psychiatrists should perform the assessment of suicidal women. I contacted The Psychological Society of Ireland on Monday to query if they objected to this – particularly considering that the assessment in the original X Case was performed by a psychologist – but was told that the organisation needed “a longer time to come up with a position paper on the issue”. Why the organisation has waited until this late stage to form an opinion on the matter is something of a mystery.

Consultant psychiatrist Veronica O’Keane has also expressed concern, on medical grounds, that any legislation will be overly prescriptive when it comes to medical treatment and assessment. There is a danger that political imperatives, to draft something that those uncomfortable with the suicide test will vote for, will mean that the Bill does not give medics the latitude they need when treating women. To that end, she has recommended that any specification as regards the number of assessments be a matter for regulations, not primary legislation, and said the Department of Health should contact the Irish College Psychiatrists and request its assistance in drafting these regulations.

I emailed the Department, querying if it intended contacting the Irish College of Psychiatrists, or any other professional mental health body, to ensure that the ultimate bill, as well as being legally sound, is medically sound and received the following reply:

The Department of Health is now commencing the process of drafting legislation and regulations in this area.  This process will be informed by the Report of the Expert Group on the judgment in A, B and C v Ireland and by the Report of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children arising from the three days of public hearing on the issue held last week. Further consultation with relevant stakeholders might also take place during the drafting process as required.

While the department is leaving the door open to further consultation with professional bodies, it is not ideal that one such body, The Psychological Society of Ireland, appears to have no position, as of yet, on the matter.

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Our cultural heritage is under siege by bureaucratic barbarians at the gate

Posted on January 10, 2013 by

THE attempt of members of Athlone Town Council to remove an exhibit from a local gallery should not be dismissed as an isolated case of parochial philistinism and should alert the public to the dangers of the Government’s plan to merge the boards of the National Library and National Museum

In a plot line straight out of Father Ted, a number of councillors in Athlone have reacted with horror to a large installation by artist Shane Cullen, which painstakingly reproduces the messages of hunger-striking Republican prisoners that were smuggled out of the infamous H-Block prison in 1981. 

However, instead of picketing the gallery with signs screaming “down with this sort of thing” or “careful now”, Fine Gael Councillor Mark Cooney opted to put down a motion at Monday’s local authority meeting calling for the art work to be removed. 

The remainder of this piece can be viewed on the Examiner website, where it was published on Jan 9. 

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Clarification re Pat Rabbitte and “offensive” tweets

Posted on January 8, 2013 by

In a blog post earlier today I discussed an article in the Irish Independent on Saturday in which Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte described a series of tweets about Senator Ronan Mullen as “offensive” and “deplorable”.

The tweets in question, according to the piece, were primarily from @Jim_Sheridan, a freelance producer and musical director of RTE’s Late Late show. In one, he responded to a rather crass joke, when one user suggested the Senator be crucified with rusty nails, while in others he lampooned the Senator using photoshop to superimpose his face onto a number of religious and pop culture images.

Curious about whether the Minister had actually seen the tweets and, if so, which ones he found objectionable, I contacted the Minister’s office yesterday to discuss his comments. I did not speak to him directly but received this emailed response from a spokesman:

“I personally told the Irish Independent that I would not comment on any tweet I had not seen but that ‘I would deplore the use of offensive material from whatever source’ – which was by way of a reply to questioning about the place of employment of the person who posted the tweet.”

However, before I posted the blog I failed to contact the journalist who wrote the piece, senior features writer at the Independent, Gemma O’Doherty. She has informed me that, unlike me, she spoke personally to the minister before publication. She also states that at no point did he tell her he would not comment on a tweet he had not seen. During a documented interview, he described the tweets as dreadful, offensive and deplorable. She also confirmed that she had sent Mr Sheridan’s tweets to the Minister and, when I called the Minister’s office again this evening, this was confirmed.

Any unintended inference that the Irish Independent’s article was inaccurate is withdrawn and I apologise to Gemma O’Doherty in this regard.

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Irish abortion law: women treated as insentient incubators and instructed to grin and, literally, bear it.

Posted on April 30, 2012 by

IF Labour is wondering why its support has suffered a vertiginous drop since last year’s election it need only look to its TDs’ shameful contributions to last week’s Dáil debate on abortion for answers.

One by one they got to their feet and waxed lyrical about their sympathy for women who find themselves forced to travel abroad for an abortion, fulminated about the appalling failure of successive governments to do anything to resolve the legal quagmire that enmeshes this most controversial of issues, declared their unwavering support for legislation to finally give effect to the X Case judgment — and then promptly voted against a Bill that would do just that.

Now, let’s get a few things straight. It may come as a surprise to hear this but women in this country have had a constitutional right to an abortion, if their lives are at risk, for nearly 30 years, since the constitutional amendment was passed in 1983.

A High Court judge, in the X Case in 1992, said the failure of government to enact legislation to give legal effect to that right was “inexcusable”. Six years later another judge, in the C case, said she didn’t want the High Court to become a “licensing authority” for abortion — vulnerable women constantly forced to mount costly legal actions to determine their right to an abortion.

The response of government, in 2002, was to try to pass a constitutional amendment that would have removed the right of suicidal women to an abortion. They would rather have let them die. Thankfully, the Irish people rejected that amendment.

In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said the State’s failure to implement a framework to allow a woman unambiguously determine her right to a lawful abortion was a breach of her human rights.

The judgment is binding and while the court could not tell the State how to comply with its obligations under international law it did pointedly note that Ireland is almost alone in the Western world in not having enacted legislation to clearly define in statute the conditions governing access to abortion.

Remember, this is not abortion on demand. Or even abortion for health reasons — no matter how serious those health issues may be. The ECHR ruled that the State’s preferred practice of exporting desperately ill women for abortions was perfectly fine. The only thing this ruling relates to is access to an abortion when that abortion will save the life of the mother.

Still, the Government felt compelled to create yet another stumbling block before legislation could even be contemplated and long-fingered action by creating an expert group to discuss how best to bring itself into line with the court’s judgment.

The reasons for this are purely political and have nothing to do with women or their best interests. TDs are simply too craven to accept the implications of the ECHR ruling so they have outsourced the decision to a quango that will be cynically used to deflect criticism when it eventually reports back and recommends legislation.

Then , of course, there will be another endless delay before legislation is drafted and, if the Government manages to get around to it before the end of its term, it may be enacted.

Incredibly, last week was the first time in the history of the State that an abortion Bill was debated in the Dáil, but TDs like Michelle Mulherin still insisted that those supporting it were moving too fast — as if a 30-year delay wasn’t long enough.

The faux controversy surrounding the Bill, the only purpose of which was to grant women an abortion if one was required to save their life, was truly horrifying and reveals the naked contempt with which women are treated by the body politic.

Imagine if politicians had been debating a Bill that offered life-saving treatment for diabetics, or asthmatics or cystic fibrosis patients and it had been defeated in favour of waiting an indeterminate length of time for a report and subsequent identikit legislation? There would have been outrage, deservedly so, but because the debate concerned women, and their right to an abortion, politicians were too cowardly to act.

It really was nauseating but the behaviour of Labour TDs, only one of whom, rebel TD Patrick Nulty, supported the Bill, was particularly odious.

At least those TDs implacably opposed to abortion didn’t betray their conscience. They opposed this abortion Bill and they’ll oppose the next one. It was Labour TDs, with their mealy-mouthed words of support and their patronising extensions of thanks to the proposers of the Bill for raising the issue, who abandoned their principles when they casually torpedoed it.

Support for last week’s Bill, a highly restrictive piece of legislation that would have required the opinion of two doctors before an abortion could be performed to save a woman’s life, is a no-brainer. The real debate we need to have in this country is extending that right to women whose physical or mental health is seriously harmed by their pregnancy.

Currently, most Irish women cannot avail of a medical abortion, a pill taken over the course of a number of days, because of the logistics of travelling abroad. They have to opt for a day procedure, a surgical abortion, which, for safety reasons, cannot be performed as early as a medical abortion.

So, women are forced to wait for up to two months, while their pregnancy progresses, before they can leave the country for a much more invasive procedure. They are also less likely to access vital after-care services, once they return to Ireland, because of the stigma attached to their decision to travel for a procedure that, if performed here, could result in a conviction and a life-sentence.

THEN there are the women who discover, much later in their pregnancy, that the foetus has a genetic condition that means it will not survive the birth. They too are told, tough, to continue with the pregnancy and endure the birth. Why? Because a succession of male-dominated governments have presumed to tell women how they should react to that devastating news and feel perfectly content removing any vestige of personal autonomy from one of the most difficult decisions they will ever have to make.

This isn’t an area in which the State should be meddling at all. It is a personal medical decision that should be taken by women in conjunction with their partners and their doctors. Instead, women are reduced to the status of insentient incubator and instructed to grin and, literally, bear it by the self-dubbed pro-life lobby — whose concern for life doesn’t seem to extend past the moment of birth.

The 4,500 women who are unwilling or unable to comply with this diktat every year are shipped, out of sight and out of mind, beyond our puritanical shores — their silent sacrifice deemed an acceptable price to maintain the State’s illusory veneer of moral rectitude.

The abortion law on the statute books is 151 years old while the constitutional ban was introduced when a prescription was required to buy condoms and homosexuality and divorce were illegal. Ireland has changed. It’s time the law did too.

This article was first published in the Irish Examiner on April 25 2012

Posted in Justice, Politics | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

We’ll seek retribution over nation’s debt legacy if we want to, St. Bruton

Posted on April 30, 2012 by

Have you heard the good news? Finally, one of our wise elder statesmen has discovered the cure for what ails our nation.

You can forget your tribunals, criminal investigations, court cases, and convictions. No, that due process stuff is seriously overrated. What the people of this country really need to do is to get down on their hands and knees, stop complaining and start praying.

That’s according to former taoiseach and EU ambassador to the United States, John Bruton, who, during a reflection delivered in Christ the King Cathedral in Mullingar last Thursday, said the “relentless search for someone to blame” for bankrupting the country has become the eighth deadly sin, having easily leapfrogged gluttony and sloth in the immoral stakes.

“Vengeance does not cure the injury to victims. Sometimes it makes it worse. Retribution is not Christ’s way. No, that hard and unnatural thing, forgiveness, is Christ’s way,” said the chairman of IFSC Ireland — a marketing organisation for Ireland’s international financial services sector.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. We haven’t actually had an opportunity for any retribution or vengeance yet because nobody, not a sinner, has been held to account for banjaxing the country, but whist your self-indulgent bellyaching.

Saint Bruton says that even those impure thoughts — like the ones you get just after checking the balance of your overdraft, in which you imagine a number of high profile bankers starting a life sentence of hard labour in some far-flung gulag — are corroding the country.

According to the Sermon at Mullingar, modern Ireland would be a much more pleasant place if we all simply continued to turn the other cheek and quietly got on with the business of repaying Anglo’s debts for the next 20 years without grumbling so much.

Of course, we’ve all turned so many cheeks at this stage that one assumes the former Fine Gael leader is in fact asking us to drop our collective pants, and have our arses mercilessly whipped for eternity, in order to demonstrate our magnanimous capacity to forgive.

“Our reason is a gift from God and we must use it to examine our own lives, our faith and our failings . . . if we did that more often, we would not need so many regulations and regulators,” he mused.

So, the public face of the financial services sector in Ireland thinks we should replace regulation of the industry that has, thus far, cost us €100bn, in payments to banks and NAMA, with religious reflection? What’s next? Politicians telling us that we should return to the good old days when blank cheques were their preferred method of payment and one had more chance of being hit by lightning than getting a receipt for a political donation?

Bruton’s deep-seated aversion to financial investigations dates back at least 20 years when, at a Fine Gael fundraiser, Frank Dunlop told him a party councillor, Tom Hand, was demanding an extortionate amount of money, reportedly £250,000, in return for his support for the infamous Quarryvale project.

“There are no angels in the world or in Fine Gael,” was the cryptic response of the then Fine Gael leader, who failed to report the matter to gardaí or, indeed, conduct even the most cosmetic of internal inquiries into the allegation because he was “disinclined” to believe Dunlop.

Considering the “endemic and systemic” nature of the corruption that was unmasked by the Mahon Report, one would have thought that a chastened Bruton would now have a little more time for the blame game — namely, finding and prosecuting those fraudsters who used their positions of prestige and influence to fleece the country and feather their own nests.

Although not remotely religious, rarely invoking angels when told about gross corruption, I tend to come across all Old Testament when it comes to debates on the various financial fiascos that have led the country to its current sorry impasse.

Personally, I think a dash of vengeance, and a good dollop of retribution, would go a long way to restoring some public confidence in this country, its political institutions and its justice system.

Not so our former taoiseach who seems to think that a group hug, a rousing rendition of “Kumbaya” and a tearful promise to try to do better is punishment enough for those white-collar criminals whose greed and avarice cost the country its economic sovereignty.

Perhaps it’s easier to forgive and forget when one is creaming a €138,000 annual pension from an insolvent State while still boasting a high-paid job in the private sector, hobnobbing with bankers who intensively lobby for a return to wing-and-a-prayer financial regulation.

Bruton, who will never know the worry of missing successive mortgage repayments, or endure the pain of seeing a sick family member languish on a public waiting list for years, can afford his piety. What he can’t afford, apparently, is to lead by example and return some of his gargantuan pension to an impecunious State — at least until he, you know, actually retires.

Bruton’s obstinacy in this regard is in stark contrast to the patriotic stance taken by a former taoiseach he served under, Liam Cosgrave, who, without fanfare, has quietly gifted part of his pension back to the state.

Let’s not forget, the former Fine Gael leader is also receiving an EU pension for the time he spent as ambassador to the United States, income from speaking engagements, board appointments, like his position on the board for the Centre for European Policy Studies, and whatever he gets for the honorific positions he holds, like Visiting Fellow of the European Institute at the London School of Economics. That’s before his bumper salary from IFSC Ireland even comes into the equation.

Meanwhile, he feels no compunction about lambasting those, engaged in the so-called blame game, who have the temerity to wonder why nobody has yet been hauled before a court and charged with any criminal offence related to the spectacular implosion of the country’s economy and the saddling of tens of billions of euro of private debt onto the shoulders of just four million citizens.

At least others in positions of authority are finally beginning to publicly ask questions about the snail-like pace of the investigation into the banking collapse.

Speaking at the weekend, Communication Minister Pat Rabbitte said the “interminable delay” of the Garda investigation into the fetid dealings at Anglo Irish Bank was “unconscionable”, and wondered why no one has yet been charged with their part in the “destruction of the country”.

Well, Mr Rabbitte can join the club but it seems obvious that, despite the assurances given to Government, the Director of Corporate Enforcement doesn’t have the requisite resources at his disposal to conduct the investigation in anything remotely resembling a timely fashion — the four-year length of the inquiry is proof positive of that fact.

Religious high flyers like Bruton, fond of moralising from the pulpit, may be happy with the notion of white-collar crooks getting their punishment in the next life. Me? I’d prefer to see them held to account in this one.

This article was first published in the Irish Examiner on April 11 2012

Posted in Bailout, Economy, Justice, Politics | Tagged | Leave a comment

ABC v Ireland judgment, and its likely implications on abortion law in Ireland, explained.

Posted on April 6, 2012 by

I recently wrote an essay on the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) and the likely impact of the A B C v Ireland case, concerning the three Irish-based women who went to the European Court of Human Rights claiming restrictions on abortion in this country had violated their human rights, on the Irish legal system.

I’m uploading it below in PDF format as there hasn’t been that much written about the case and its legal implications. It’ll likely be too wonkish for most but it basically briefly explains the impact of the incorporation of the ECHR in domestic law, some of the more controversial aspects of the judgment and its likely impact – if the government ever get around to doing anything about it. I hope it’s written in a pretty clear way so may make the ruling, and its ramifications, a bit easier to understand.

ABCEssay

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Traditional media need to invest in content to face future with confidence

Posted on April 6, 2012 by

Why is it that traditional journalists, when asked to review new media, invariably begin with a ubiquitous, “well, I don’t use Twitter myself but …” before launching into a sneering tirade decrying it as a cyber hellhole populated entirely by illiterate goons who happily spend each waking hour directing a torrent of libellous abuse at high-profile innocents in the hopes of making their mascara run?

Bloggers, tweeters and those who post on internet fora such as boards.ie and politics.ie are scoffed at, sneered at and, generally, treated with the same sort of disdain that one normally reserves for those drunken idiots who think nothing of dropping their pants and defecating in the middle of the street after a night out. In fact, I’m sure I’ve seen that exact metaphor used to describe much of the material that can be found in internet forums.

The jailing last week of a 21-year-old Welsh student who decided to cap a day spent drinking by logging onto Twitter and posting racist slurs about footballer Fabrice Muamba, who remains in a serious condition after he collapsed at a recent FA Cup game, has only served to copperfasten the keyboard-warrior stereotype of the social networking site.

In reality, Liam Stacey is an aberration and the immediate online reaction to his vile racist comments, universal condemnation which resulted in him posting a grovelling apology for his remarks long before the police knocked on his door, highlights the majority opinion of the online community — a zero-tolerance consensus when it comes to those who mistake freedom of expression for freedom to defame.

That’s not to say that there are not loathsome trolls lurking behind a mask of anonymity, who use their poison pen, and poor spelling, to try to provoke a reaction. Of course they exist, but the best policy when it comes to these halfwits is not to get angry, or even get even, but just to ignore them. Without the oxygen of attention, those sad individuals, who use social media to launch vitriolic personal attacks on people they’ve never even met, soon return to obscurity and their deep-seated feelings of inadequacy.

The mistake of many in print and broadcast journalism is to react with wounded feelings when online critics dare to express an opinion that is divergent to their own and arrogantly write off the tens of thousands of ordinary people who regularly use new media to express honestly held opinions as deviant or stupid or both.

This deeply entrenched “them and us” attitude arises, primarily, because of fear and distrust. Media is in a state of flux at the moment that could see, if current trends continue unabated, the demise of print journalism altogether.

All over the world newspapers with proud and long-standing records of breaking stories, and providing an important public service for their respective communities, are going to the wall as readers migrate online. In most cases it is only when those newspapers are gone that people realise what they are missing — quality journalism, comment and analysis from a source they can trust.

Irish people’s traditional affinity for buying a daily newspaper means that the decline in sales is not yet terminal here, but the time for wringing hands and just wishing the internet away is long since passed. Business as usual is not an option anymore — something has to give and it’s not going to be the internet.

Print journalists, and their employers, should not be so insecure about the marketability of their talents and skills. Most bloggers don’t have the time or the resources to spend days, weeks or months investigating stories of public interest.

Most cannot spend time covering courts or Dáil sittings or any number of events that you’ll read about each day in newspapers like the Irish Examiner. They would equally baulk at the thought of getting out of bed at some ungodly hour of the morning to visit the scene of a murder, in order to interview witnesses, and few would entertain the notion of knocking on the door of a recently bereaved family, unannounced, in order to try to get their side of the story.

Newspapers retain an edge on much of the myriad information that is swilling around in cyberspace because of the investment of media companies in journalists and photographers who go out and unearth, verify and add context to the news.

In truth, there is something of a symbiotic relationship between old and new media. It is often the work of traditional journalists, who have broken stories or covered important news events, that is discussed online following its publication. True, the debate is not always the prettiest, sometimes becoming unnecessarily bitter, but, equally, one can often find thoughtful, insightful and witty posts online and, increasingly, valuable original content in blogs like thestory.ie and namawinelake.wordpress.com.

However, without the existence of traditional media, many of the most popular stories being debated online right now would not have come to public attention at all.

Regrettably, newspapers can’t survive on the feelgood factor derived from publishing stories in the public interest. Alan Crosbie, the chairman of Thomas Crosbie Holdings which owns this newspaper, has called for State funding to be extended from RTÉ to broadsheet newspapers but, not least because of EU competition law, this simply won’t happen.

Instead, something much more difficult has to be undertaken — an attempt to convince a readership, used to an all-you-can-eat buffet of free news, that it’s worth spending a couple of quid each week to pay for the news that so many resources have gone into creating.

Without this investment the continued existence of newspapers becomes harder to rationalise. What’s the point of a newspaper, full of press releases and regurgitated information when one could get the exact same news by joining a couple of governmental mailing lists? Newspapers, and indeed broadcasters, need to invest in their content — the thing that sets them apart from all of the competition — so they can continue to scoop their rivals with original material and provide loyal readers with stories, and analysis, that they simply won’t be able to get elsewhere.

Increasingly, the danger is that declines in sales and advertising revenues will lead to a vicious circle of cutbacks and layoffs that will whittle away journalists’ ability to act as society’s bloodhounds, sniffing out news stories, transforming them, instead, into glorified press officers.

The internet is a big place and there is ample room for both old and new media, but unless traditional media groups accept the reality that any future growth is going to be internet-based, and realistically plan to exploit the growing market in mobiles and tablets, then their future cannot be assured.

Niche products with a captive audience, like the Financial Times, have proven that pay walls do not have to sound the death knell for newspapers. The challenge, for those that do not enjoy such a narrowly defined niche, is to engage with their readers and devise a pay wall that will not scare them off when they have the temerity to ask for money in exchange for making their work available online.

This piece was first published in the Irish Examiner on April 4 2012. 

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