Is Ireland trying to shake off the shackles of the Catholic Church?

Taoiseach Enda Kenny

Is Ireland still a Catholic country?  

It's an interesting and timely question, given the watershed speech in the Dail (Parliament) last week by the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny and the much-quoted reference he made to not being a Catholic taoiseach.  

The reference came during a debate on the government's proposed abortion legislation.  The quote got so much coverage -- some of it inaccurate -- it's worth repeating exactly what he said:

"I am proud to stand here as a public representative, as a taoiseach who happens to be a Catholic, but not as a Catholic taoiseach."   

To an outsider, it might seem like a statement of the obvious.  We are, after all, a republic.  We are governed by the people, not by any church.  A person's religion, even if that person is the taoiseach, should be separate from their politics.  

But we have always been a peculiar kind of Republic.  Our Constitution, introduced by de Valera in 1937, specifically gave the Catholic Church a special and influential place in the formation of Irish laws and Irish society.  And although that special position has now been withdrawn, the resonance here of what used to be called Rome Rule lives on. 

So when Kenny states the obvious, as he did last week, it still feels like some kind of breakthrough.  And it is still welcome for that very reason.

But the fact that it is still characterized in the Irish media as a courageous stance is probably more revealing of us than we realize.  You would not hear Hollande saying something like that in France, for example, even though it's still a substantially Catholic country (note the recent huge opposition to gay marriage there, for example). 

But to be fair to Kenny, he is marking out a line in the sand that none of his predecessors was prepared to lay down.  It's a long way from the crawling behavior of the early generation of our leaders like de Valera, who were always sinking to their knees to kiss the rings of the bishops.  

De Valera referred most of his legislative proposals to the church, usually the malign figure of Archbishop McQuaid, then head of the Catholic Church in Ireland.  

To be fair to de Valera, he was no different than all the politicians of his generation, most of whom would not dream of ignoring the "advice" of the church on proposed legislation and how to run the country.  

This fear of the church bedeviled our politics until very recently.   When the “rebel” Charlie Haughey finally introduced contraception, it was only available to married couples on prescription! 

Even the liberalizing Fine Gael Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald caved in to the bishops and held the pro-life referendum which gave constitutional equality to the life of a mother and that of a fetus, and which got us into the mess on abortion that we are still trying to disentangle.     

The influence and power of the church pervaded all levels of Irish society for decades, in fact for nearly all of the life of the state since its formation in the 1920s.  You don't have to be as old as me to remember what it felt like. 

In rural Ireland where I grew up nothing -- and I mean nothing -- was done without the tacit approval of the local priest.  Holding a dance or running a club or doing virtually anything that brought people, especially young people, together required the imprimatur in advance. 

The image of the local priest out at night with his flashlight and blackthorn stick patrolling the laneways after dances in search of canoodling couples may now be seen as a joke, but it was all too real in the Ireland of the fifties and sixties and even the seventies. 

In retrospect, it seems odd that so few people ever stood up to this intimidation.   But then how could they, when there was no leadership from the top. 

Kenny's line in the sand statement about not being a Catholic taoiseach should be contrasted with what another Fine Gael taoiseach, John A. Costello, told the Dail back in the 1950s:  "I am an Irishman second, I am a Catholic first, and I accept without qualification the teaching of the hierarchy and the church to which I belong." 

So yes, we were a Catholic country, ruled as much by Rome as by our parliament in Dublin.  The question is, are we still one?  

The answer probably is no, but it is a very qualified no in spite of Kenny's statement.  People are now more determined to make up their own minds on issues, rather than be told how to think by the church.  

The recent Irish Times poll showing huge approval for the government's proposals on abortion demonstrates that, despite fierce opposition by the church leaders and the usual hysteria from “pro-life” extremists.

But before we start clapping ourselves on the back, the minimalist extent of the proposed changes on abortion shows just how slowly things are changing here.    

The new legislation will offer very little increased protection for women in crisis situations, and the complexity of the regime will mean that the vast majority of Irish women who want abortions will continue to go to the U.K. to get them. 

One of the interesting things to emerge from the details of the proposed legislation which emerged last week is that medical institutions, unlike the individuals who work in them, will not have the right to opt out of abortion provision on conscience grounds.  

In Ireland, the running of many of our biggest hospitals -- like nearly all of our schools -- is heavily influenced by the church.  In the old days this was total control, but these days it operates through wider boards of management. 

But the element of control and "setting the ethos" is still there, even though the state pays nearly all of the costs of running both hospitals and schools. 

This ludicrous situation evolved because over the years it was the church which raised the funds to set up schools and many hospitals.  The result was that the church gained and held on to control (the patron would be the local priest or bishop) even though the money had actually come from the people.  It will be interesting to see whether the church will attempt to limit the operation of the abortion regime through its influence in the hospitals. 

Overall, the Catholic Church here appears to be fighting a losing battle.   With its credibility totally undermined by the child abuse scandals and a catastrophic fall in weekly church attendance, the battle to keep Ireland as a Catholic country is being lost. 

But the last people to realize this seems to be the Catholic bishops themselves who are still behaving and issuing diktats as though nothing has changed.  

And the extremist Catholic campaigners in the “pro-life” lobby are making things worse for them by alienating the vast majority of people, including people who regard themselves as Catholic, by heckling the Taoiseach and sending bloody plastic fetuses to other politicians, and even issuing death threats.     

The irony of all this is that Kenny is a practicing Catholic and a man who takes his religion very seriously.  Yet he is the one who has been brave enough to make an explicit statement in the Dail making clear the final disconnection of church and state in Ireland. 

It's about time for us.

Young Irish high on drugs and booze and vandalism are a disgrace

The cheapness of alcohol in Ireland has become a huge problem

Looking out my study window right now on Tuesday morning I see things are back to normal.  It's raining!

But for the past week and right through the weekend things have been far from normal.   Not a drop of rain. Hot unbroken sunshine from clear skies all day long.   It was like the Mediterranean.  

We needed it badly because here in Ireland we have come through the coldest, wettest spring for decades. So when the sun finally appeared a week ago and then turned into a six-day heat wave we basked in it.

They can warn all they like about the dangers of skin cancer and the need to slap on the factor 30, but when Irish people get the chance to escape the drizzle and soak up the rays, they just go for it.  They can't resist.  So there are painfully pink bodies everywhere today.   

For most people here a few days of hot weather means stripping off outside work or college during lunch break, trying to get home early and praying that it will last to the weekend. 

Unbelievably, this time it did, right across the country. It was glorious. 

But once again it revealed a far from glorious side to Irish society -- the ongoing problem we have here with drink.

For the Irish, particularly Irish teens and young adults, sun and booze seem to go together.  It's not just a few beers with a barbecue. It's a compulsion to get completely out of it.

This leads to tragic outcomes like drownings (there were a few here over the past week) as drunk teenagers decide to go swimming.  It also leads to fights and even riots as the alcohol kicks in and tempers flare up in the rising temperatures. 

The Internet hums with messages about raves and beach parties.   Nothing wrong with that, except that the results are often out of control drunken mobs throwing bottles, doing drugs and having running battles.   

There were two of these not far from where I live on the north side of Dublin, one when the good weather kicked off and the other during this weekend.

The first was a running battle on the popular family beach in Portmarnock, with vicious fighting and bottles being thrown, terrifying children who were in the vicinity. 

Anecdotal evidence indicated that it started as a battle between two mobs, one immigrant and the other local (north Co. Dublin has a high concentration of immigrant families who came here during the boom, mainly from Eastern Europe).

With hundreds involved, the few Gardai (police) who arrived at the scene could only stand and watch and video what was happening.  (You can see this yourself on YouTube if you search for Portmarnock beach riot).  The video is filmed from a safe distance and gives little idea of how terrifying the event was, particularly for families who were caught on the beach when the trouble broke out. 

One tactic that the drunk and drugged up teens are using now to defy the police is to congregate in such large numbers that it's impossible to control them (at least for an unarmed police force). 

At the weekend, organized on the Internet, they descended on Howth, the fishing and sailing village at the end of the Dart electric train line on the north side of Dublin, which is in all the guide books and is visited by hundreds of tourists to the city every weekend in the summer.

The tourists come to stroll down the piers, admire the fish in the fish shops or lunch in the restaurants around the harbor.  There are big sailing yachts to see and boat trips out to the famous Ireland's Eye, the small island just offshore.  There are beaches for a swim, cliff walks, golf courses and the ancient Howth Castle to explore.  

Howth is a spectacularly beautiful place (one reason why I live there), and it's a perfect break for tourists in Dublin who want to get out of the city for a while.  It's less than half an hour away from the city center by Dart.  So, as I said, it's hugely popular with tourists.  

But what greeted the tourists who came out to Howth last weekend to stroll down the pier must have been left them reeling in shock, particularly if they were trapped at the far end of the pier when the rave started. 

Again, you can see it on YouTube if you search for Irish Teens Start Rave in Howth.   The teens have taken over the pier, and two police patrol cars who arrived can do nothing about it. 

The short video does not communicate how threatening it was later on, and it's hard to see the bottles and the drugs. But people who passed the pier at the time say that a large number of teens were completely out of their skulls.  There were fights breaking out and there were reported stabbings. 

The common link in these two incidents -- and in others like them around the country over the past week -- is the amount of booze involved (these youngsters can down a bottle of spirits no problem) and the way this behavior always emerges whenever we get a few days of good weather.  It's like mass teen hysteria brought on by the sun. 

The next day, of course, a massive clean-up is needed.  Because the Irish kids are not just drunks, they are drunken pigs who leave litter, bottles and all kinds of crap all over the place.  They treat wherever they are like it was a garbage dump.  

No one seems to know what to do about the booze problem here, which is getting worse, not better, particularly among the young Irish.  If anyone foreign (like the Brits or the Yanks) calls us drunks we go crazy and say it's racial stereotyping and we demand apologies. 

Well, that doesn't apply to me because I'm Irish and I can tell the truth as I see it.   And what I saw over the weekend makes it clear to me that we Irish have a serious drink problem. 

The present government has been trying to do something, but knowing exactly what to do is far from easy.  Minimum pricing?  Age limits?  Health warnings?  Education campaigns? 

Finding a solution that will be effective but still allow responsible people to drink in moderation seems almost impossible. 

The last junior minister for health here (before she fell out with the minister) was Labor politician Roisin Shortall, who took a strong line and bluntly said that as a nation "we need to reduce the amount of alcohol that we drink.”

The cheap and easy availability of alcohol happened in recent years and is a big factor, she said, referring to the way Irish supermarkets sell booze at rock bottom prices to get customers into stores. Some kinds of booze (beer, cider) are now often cheaper than bottled water. 

But her efforts to do something were stymied by the powerful alcohol lobby which so far has managed to stop efforts to introduce a minimum price for alcohol.

She said that alcohol puts huge pressure on the health system and costs us nearly €4 billion a year in hospital costs, alcohol-related crime, missed days at work, inefficiency and so on. 

Then there are all the things that are impossible to cost, like the damage done to the kids of alcohol addicted parents who are too out of it to look after them. 

Official figures released by Shortall last year showed that per head of population we’re drinking almost 12 liters of alcohol a year, equivalent to a bottle of spirits a week per person over 15.  (In comparison, the figure for the U.S. is about 8 liters per head.) 

Shortall's role is now being handled by someone else, but we still have to see real action.  It's not going to be easy because of the power of the alcohol lobby and how ingrained alcohol is in Irish society. 

In particular youth drinking is a huge problem, with the young Irish having one of the highest levels of drunkenness in Europe.  One theory on how to tackle this involves limiting alcohol advertising and visibility.

Shortall had proposed that all drinks sponsorship of sports events should be phased out over the next 10 years.  But this will leave a huge funding gap in sports budgets and no one knows how to fill it.

Meanwhile, the alcohol industry is campaigning against such a restriction. 

It's all about getting the young Irish to buy into responsible drinking instead of feeling that the only point in drinking is getting out of your head as fast as possible.  Maybe then they will stop disgracing us as a nation, not only at home but in places where the young Irish have emigrated to like the U.K., the U.S. and Australia. 

Suffer the little Irish children - the government's regulations failed to protect babies being abused in day care centers

Police outside Links creche in Abington, Malahide, Dublin

The main story dominating the news here for the past week has not been about politics or the financial crisis or austerity cutbacks. It's been about children, and how we in Ireland care for them in creches or what Americans call day care centers. 

The sudden, intense interest in the subject was sparked by the broadcast of a TV investigation a week ago in which concealed cameras captured what was going on in three creches in the greater Dublin area.  

The hour-long Prime Time program on RTE was shocking and disturbing. It showed toddlers, aged one to three, being roughly handled, shouted at, locked in a dark room, forced to sit at a table with nothing to do, thrown down on floor mattresses and ordered to sleep even though some were clearly not tired.  

The toddlers were being looked after by staff who appeared to be mainly teenagers with no empathy for young children, and no idea how to look after them.  

It was very disturbing to watch, particularly at naptime when some kids who did not want to sleep were picked up and slammed down on their mattresses with considerable force.   This was accompanied by blankets thrown on their faces and shouted orders to sleep. 

Most upsetting, however, was not the children who were crying and miserable, but the mute little ones who had learned the regime and sat in silence staring into the distance, detaching themselves from what was going on around them.  

Anyone who knows even the minimum about early years care of children knows how damaging this can be.   

Equally, most parents will know the panic that can result from a toddler being locked on his or her own in a dark room even for a few minutes as punishment. 

At that early age, a child has no reference point, no ability to compute time or space.  Only the present moment matters, and a few minutes may be an eternity. Screaming panic can be the result, which may cause lasting damage.       

The program had been preceded by a publicity build up in the days before it was aired so a hug audience was watching across Ireland, including thousands of parents who send their young kids to creches every day while they go to work.   

As I said, it was deeply shocking and disturbing viewing, so traumatizing for some parents that they skipped work the following day so that they could keep their toddlers at home until they could get reassurances from their creches that the same thing was not happening there.  

Since then, official Ireland has swung into action, not actually doing much of course, apart from making speeches saying how shocking it all was, how there needs to be a thorough investigation and how new rules for creche inspections, staff training and so on need to be put in place without delay.  

The irony of the situation is that we even have a minister for children in the present government, an experienced politician (and mother), Frances Fitzgerald, who did a good job of looking shocked and deeply concerned.  

No doubt she was, and rightly so, particularly since this appalling situation had been exposed on her watch. 

Some of the creche workers shown on camera have been fired or suspended, and an investigation is underway.  But starting a witch hunt against these teenagers -- even if they seemed to be lacking in the basic compassion for kids that should be normal and does not depend on training -- is not the answer. 

The problem is much more fundamental than that.   It has more to do with what has happened with child care in Ireland (and elsewhere as well) in recent years. 

When the Celtic Tiger (there's a phrase you never hear these days) got going over 10 years ago we had a shortage of workers.  It became official policy to encourage women to work outside the home. 

As the boom went on and prices soared, for most couples the reality was that it took two incomes to buy and run a home.  So the element of choice for young mothers was gone anyway. The reality was that they had to work, rather than that they chose to work. 

The result was a huge demand for pre-school childcare, usually called creches here.  The government stepped in, offering grants and tax breaks and setting up and running creches became a business.

Some working parents were able to do it the old way, finding a neighboring woman who would look after kids, or even hiring a child minder to come in and work for them.  

But for many parents the new creche chains, with their shiny logos and cute names like Giraffe, became the norm. 

With property prices forcing young couples to buy homes a long way from their workplaces and do a long daily commute, small children, even babies, were being left in creches for very long days. 

Thinking back now, it was asking for trouble.  The money from the government went into buildings, not training. 

The government introduced basic rules for creches, for staff training and minimum staff numbers, and for an inspection regime (the reality was anyone could open a creche, many new creches were open for a year or a lot longer before they got any inspection, and little or no training was required for the majority of staff, most of whom were teenagers).   

The three creches featured in the Prime Time investigation were all part of the new creche chains.   These are major businesses which have got a lot of government money, are making substantial profits and pay the ordinary staff not much more than the legal minimum wage.  It's a business, rather than a caring operation.  

This is not to excuse the behavior of some of the staff shown in the TV investigation, which was truly appalling.  But looking after small kids has never been an easy job. 

As the father of twin boys whose mother went back to work three weeks after they arrived, I can vouch for that (and I had lots of help).  

Being a rocket scientist is easy peasy in comparison with looking after a few toddlers at home on a long, wet afternoon when you can't get out and everyone is a bit cranky.  Minding and entertaining a few toddlers like that requires huge reserves of creativity and energy as well as understanding.  

And I'm talking here about your own kids.  For a few teenagers attempting to look after a roomful of kids with whom they have no real connection, it's even harder to summon up the patience, effort and concentration required. 

That's why training is so important.  Although it's not clear that more training would have avoided what we saw on our TV screens last week, since personality and aptitude are also important.  

Looking after kids, like other "caring" professions such as nursing, is not just "a job."    

The revelations in the TV program have shaken the country here and made everyone think carefully about what we are doing to our kids.   Do we have any idea what they go through in their creches during a long day?  

There have been calls for an official investigation, for new legislation, for much higher training for creche staff, for increased inspections, for CCTV cameras so that parents can monitor what is happening during the day and so on. 

A raft of new rules and regulations are likely to be introduced which will make childcare even more expensive, and still may not solve the fundamental problem.  But that's what official Ireland does.  

It's like some of the present rules which may stop a woman from opening a small creche in her home for a few neighbors' kids because she does not have separate bathrooms or other facilities deemed essential by officialdom. 

We're very good at writing high-minded rules and regulations after the event such as this and our politicians are excellent at producing complicated reports on problems like this one when it is too late.  

Implementing regulations and following through are things we're not good at in Ireland.

Ireland: A tax haven for American tech companies like Google, Twitter and Apple but without the sun

Taoiseach Enda Kenny speaks at a business conference in Dublin last week.

The reaction of Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny, senior politicians and the IDA boss to the accusation in the U.S. congressional hearing last week that Ireland is a tax haven reminded me of the famous Jack Nicholson line: "You can't handle the truth." 

Our leaders can deny it all they want, but the simple truth is that they've been caught with their trousers down.  Ireland is indeed a tax haven, and it's the tax haven of choice for some of the biggest high tech companies in the world like Apple and Google, most of which are American.

We may not have the sunshine they have in tax havens like the Cayman Islands, but we're an island and we're a tax haven even if we don't have palm trees leaning over the beaches. 

As Apple admitted, they had agreed an effective tax rate of two percent with Ireland when they first set up here over 30 years ago.  And the tax they have actually paid in Ireland in recent years has been a fraction of one percent. 

Okay, so it's not zero.  But what can you call a country that facilitates tax avoidance on that scale except a tax haven?  It's a long way off our declared 12.5 percent corporation tax rate and it's certainly a long way off the 35 percent corporation tax rate in the U.S. 

So, yes, we're a tax haven.  We may not like the connotations that this has with dirty money and criminality, and we may not be the first choice for dodgy people trying to hide money (although it did emerge last weekend that one of the biggest online porn groups in the world is opening an office here for tax reasons).  

But the revelation has blown out of the water our usual publicity about why so many high tech companies set up here.  We've always said it is because of our highly educated young workforce, our agreeable climate, our open economy, our position on the doorstep of the European market, as well as our 12.5 percent corporation tax rate.  We have always insisted that our 12.5 percent rate was "just one of a number of factors" that  enticed these companies here. 

We now know that this is horse manure. 

What has now been revealed is that some of the biggest foreign companies in Ireland were paying only a tiny fraction of the 12.5 percent rate, and that the real reason so many of them have come here is because we help them to minimize their tax down to virtually nothing.  Like any other tax haven. 

Rather than the tax haven label, a better description of Ireland is the one used by a leading U.K. tax expert last week when he characterized us as "a doormat state."  This is a state where foreign companies can wipe their feet of enormous tax obligations in return for a small fee.

Fearful of the fallout from what has emerged at the hearings in the U.S., Kenny and the Minister for Finance Michael Noonan were working overtime last week trying to deny the undeniable. 

Kenny was making statements on our tax regime in that forceful way he uses when he's under pressure, a tone that sounds almost like a threat. 

"Ireland is not a tax haven.  Our corporate tax rate on taxable profits is 12.5 percent and there are no exceptions to that.   We do not do special tax rate deals with companies,” he said.  And there was a lot more of this.

So if Kenny is saying the rate is 12.5 percent and there are no exceptions, and Apple is saying that they pay only one or two percent, surely someone must be lying?  Well, no.

Notice those two little words Enda used -- "taxable profits."  What that means is that tax is not charged on all account profits, just on taxable profits, the amount of profit left after all kinds of concessions, deductions and allowances. 

So you can have a headline corporation tax rate of 12.5 percent but you can end up paying almost nothing if you are allowed to make lots of these deductions.   And that is what Ireland has been doing.  

When we are encouraging companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and all the rest of them to come here we explain to them how to work the system.  We may even tailor the system for them.  

Kenny can claim in that outraged and aggrieved tone he uses that Ireland's rate is 12.5 percent and he is not telling lies.  But there's a lot more to our tax system for foreign companies than just the headline rate.  

That's just for starters.   Before we even get to the point of how foreign companies reduce their tax bills in Ireland, there are many other ways they can work the anomalies and contradictions between the tax codes in different countries to minimize their liability.  

Some of these are so basic and blatant they are almost unbelievable.  For example, the U.S. code says that companies must pay tax wherever they are incorporated. 

But the Irish code says that companies must pay tax wherever they are managed and controlled. We
learned last week that this has allowed a good deal of Apple's business to operate in a vacuum between the two codes and end up paying nothing.  

Typically, these big, high tech companies break up their business into smaller companies which separately do manufacturing, marketing, sales, customer service and other functions, and these companies may be in different countries with different tax codes.  The intellectual property rights will always be in a separate company.  

If the intellectual property rights are held in a low tax country like Ireland, the huge profits made elsewhere on products based on the intellectual property can be minimized by charging a great deal for these rights.  

Or if sales and customer service companies in Ireland are producing high profits, they can be minimized by charging the Irish arm a high rate for other aspects of the business based in another country.  

This is called transfer pricing, and it's a basic principle of the tax manipulation carried out by these big multi-national corporations with their armies of lawyers and tax experts.  Some of it is legitimate, but it is wide open to manipulation.    

That is the way it's done at its simplest.  But the same principle is used in much more complex structures across the international business of most of the world's biggest multinationals, including those with operations in Ireland. 

The scale of what is going on -- and the amount of tax being avoided -- is mind blowing. What we learned from the hearing in Congress last week was that Apple had paid little or no tax on $74 billion in foreign sales of its products over the past four years, largely because of the way it can structure business through Ireland.

One of its Irish companies, Apple Operations International, has a brass plate here and nothing else; it received $30 billion in income between 2009 and 2011.  

That a company like Apple which promotes an image of integrity and responsibility behaves in such a way is shameful.  That a country like Ireland facilitates this behavior is also shameful, even it means a few thousand jobs here.

And from Ireland's perspective, of course, the jobs are the primary concern, not just in Apple but in dozens of other foreign companies here. There are now around 150,000 jobs involved in multinationals located here; there used to be over 200,000.  

The jobs are so important to us that they have made us accomplices in this international tax avoidance scam by multi-nationals, the majority of which originally are American.   

One argument is that if we didn't do it the jobs would simply go elsewhere, because other countries are playing this game as well.  

And another argument is that the Americans have only themselves to blame for their failure to collect tax revenue that rightly should be paid in the U.S., where many of these high tech businesses began and were developed.   

The American tax code is such that as long as these companies keep their profits overseas they don't have to pay U.S. tax on them.  The result is that around $1.5 trillion in retained profits is now held overseas by U.S. companies, money that could be creating jobs back in the U.S., and the tax on which could be easing the deficit problem in the U.S. 

So why does the U.S. not do something about it?  Ask the Republicans in Congress. 

Here in Ireland, what this has also exposed is the limitation of our decades old policy of attracting FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) here by all kinds of incentives.   We are hopelessly dependent on the jobs provided by these multinationals who set up here and who can up sticks and take off elsewhere if we upset them by charging them too much tax. 

Why can't we develop more home grown industry to provide jobs?  We manage it in some areas, like the agri-food sector.  We have small software companies which are impressive.   But overall we depend on outsiders to come here and provide jobs for us. 

We pretend they come here because we're so bright and well educated and so damn likable (well, we're Irish!).  

But the reality has now been exposed.  We're a tax haven without the palm trees.  That's the main reason they come.

Pro-Life campaigners need to get a grip - Irish women still have no choice over abortion

Abortion rights marchers took to the streets in Dublin on Saturday.

Those so-called pro-life demonstrators at Boston College really need to get a grip.  As Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny made clear to them, Ireland has one of the most restrictive attitudes to abortion in the world.

“There is no change in the legislation in regard to abortion which has been on the statute books now since 1861,” he told them, as if that is something to be proud of.  

As we all know by now, the proposed changes in Irish law are so restrictive that abortion here will still be extremely rare, and the thousands of Irish women who want an abortion each year will still have to travel to the U.K. for one.  

One wonders where the Boston protestors were when that unfortunate Indian woman who was refused a termination in a Galway hospital died. Did they protest then at the medieval set-up in Ireland which resulted in her death?  Or are they only pro some lives?  

But enough about the Boston protestors.  We have enough pro-life zealots of our own to be worrying about, and they have been making their voices heard more often in the past two weeks as the abortion debate has got underway in the media, the country and the Dail (Irish Parliament.)

As the memory of Savita Halappanavar has faded a little they have become increasingly vocal, putting forward all kinds of far-fetched scenarios in which the "floodgates" are opened here to abortion on demand.

Myself and my 21-year-old daughter passed a group of them who had set up outside the General Post Office on O'Connell Street a few days ago (where Pearse read his Proclamation in 1916), with their placards showing bloody fetuses and a petition table for signatures "to protect the unborn."  

They were all men with austere faces who looked like they were on day release from somewhere, and they were aggressively approaching people on the pavement with their leaflets.  

"If one of them stands in front of me I'm going to punch him in the face," my daughter warned me.  "How DARE they tell me what to do with my body.  Who do they think they are?"

But really, like the protestors in Boston, they have little to be worried about.  Nothing much is going to change here on abortion.  

The absurdity of some of the proposed legal framework for the introduction of abortion here is now being exposed bit by bit.  

For example, the government's abortion bill includes a maximum 14-year prison sentence for a woman here who has an abortion outside the framework of the legislation.  As you will know by now, that framework allows abortion only in cases where the life of the mother is at serious risk, and that has to be certified by up to three doctors.

So if a woman here discovers that she has an unplanned pregnancy and decides that she cannot continue with it and takes abortion pills which she buys on the Internet, is she to be jailed for 14 years?

You might think this is absurd.  Surely something like this could never happen?

But all it takes is one zealot -- possibly a relative -- to be aware of such a situation and make a formal complaint to the police and the authorities and demand action.  The problem then is that the authorities -- as in the infamous X-case in Ireland -- would be forced into action by the law.  

Or what happens when the parents of a young pregnant teenager disagree about what to do, or disagree with their daughter about whether she is suicidal or not?   Can they prevent her from taking the morning after pill?  Or can they give her the pills if they support her decision to end a pregnancy? And if they do so might they be prosecuted?

The medical grounds for an abortion will be so limiting that there is general recognition that very few such abortions will take place here in future.  Only in cases where a continuation of a pregnancy (like in some cancer cases) will mean a substantial risk to the life of the mother will an abortion be allowed.

That is the present situation, and the only advance is that the new legislation may bring greater clarity to some situations.  

Because of this, the threat of suicide as a ground for abortion is dominating the debate.  The pro-life lobby sees this as a potential loophole through which many more women might be able to get abortions here.

The Health Committee of the Dail is holding three days of hearings on the proposed legislation, and on Monday of this week the hearing was dominated by psychiatrists giving their views.  As you know, the proposed legislation will require three doctors -- including two psychiatrists -- to certify an abortion on suicidal grounds.

As with the population at large, there are psychiatrists who disagree on the issue. But what was very clear at the Health Committee hearings was that they don't like being put in the position where they might be seen as abortion deciders.

Their concern is to care for patients, including pregnant women who may be suicidal, and several of them emphasized the difficulty they face in making assessments of suicidal intent in a very short time frame.

Of course in all of this there is one forgotten part of the debate, one sector of our population who should be part of the debate but who have been virtually excluded.  That is the estimated 200,000 Irish women who have had abortions, mainly in the U.K. since more general legal abortion was introduced there in the 1960s.

While the religious zealots and medical and legal experts have been dancing on pins here teasing out convoluted hypothetical problems to do with the proposed legislation, these 200,000 Irish women, who know more about the subject than anyone else, have been almost silenced.  

A few have managed to get their voices heard on radio and some have been interviewed in a newspaper.  In contrast to the assumption being made by some of the pro-life lobbyists, none of these women took their decision easily or lightly.

It was a difficult choice for most, made even more problematic by the need to get to the U.K., to explain away their absence, to find the money for the trip, to find out where to go and so on.

Loose talk from the pro-life lobby about "floodgates" being opened is an insult to these women, the anguish of making their decision and what they went through.

Like women everywhere, there are as many reasons why Irish women have abortions as there are individuals, individual circumstances and situations.

What is clear from their voices is that a few of them do look back with a feeling of sadness, even of regret.  But the regret is usually that their circumstances did not allow them to continue the pregnancy, not that their decision was wrong at that time and in those circumstances.  

None of us can turn the clock back, no matter how much the so-called pro-lifers may try to exploit these feelings experienced years later by some women who have had abortions.

Readers of this column will by now have gathered that this writer is a total believer in a woman's absolute right to choose.  Yes, there is another potential life involved, but the responsibility for that potential life can lie only with the woman.  The moral responsibility for that potential life and whether to allow it to happen must lie with the woman, her conscience and her instinct about what is right.

The idea that one can create laws to control what a woman can do with her own body is a fundamental denial of a woman's human rights.  No man would tolerate such a restriction or removal of his bodily integrity and freedom.

Ireland's total denial of a woman's right to choose has been a shameful blot on our republican principles for too long, and sadly is going to continue indefinitely.

I believe passionately in a woman's right to choose. I also don't  want to be punched in the face by my daughter!

Abortion reform Irish style - Women still have no rights over their own bodies, continue to travel to the UK for procedure

A protestor meets Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney last week at Government Buildings in Dublin.

The outline of the government's proposals for legislation on abortion were agreed by the cabinet and published last week. 

It's important to remember that what we have so far is the heads of the bill rather than the full detail. There will be much discussion as all the detail emerges in the coming weeks, and the overall bill may be finessed somewhat before it becomes law.

But the heads of the bill give the proposed framework and the outline is clear.  The basic structure is unlikely to be changed.

The first thing to be said is that there is no proposal to change the constitutional position here which gives a pregnant woman and her fetus an equal right to life.   Our Supreme Court interpreted this 30 years ago to mean that abortion is permissible here only when there is "a real and substantial risk to the life, as opposed to the health, of the mother."  

The proposals produced by the government last week aim to make clear what this means, and to provide a legal framework for abortion in such cases.

The second thing to be said is that although women will be able to have a termination here under a legal framework for the first time, the proposed regime is so restrictive that the thousands of Irish women who now travel to Britain for abortions every year will continue to do so.  In reality, there will be no change for them.  

The core of the proposed restrictive abortion regime will be what one minister referred to last week as the one, two, three structure (the one, two and three being the number of doctors required to allow an abortion in different scenarios).   

In the first scenario -- in a case of acute medical emergency requiring a termination -- only one doctor will be required to certify that a woman can have an abortion.  In cases like this the "real and substantial risk to the life of the mother" will be immediate.   To avoid any delay in preserving the life of the woman, only one doctor will be required to certify that an abortion is necessary.  

In the second scenario, where there is a "real and substantial risk to the life of the mother" that is not immediate (in the case of certain diseases like cancer, for example), two doctors will be required to certify that an abortion is necessary.  In such non-emergency cases the threat to the life of the woman must be real, even though it is not immediate.

If either continuing the pregnancy or eventually giving birth would be a real threat to the life of the woman, an abortion may be performed.  The decision by the two doctors must be unanimous.   

One of the doctors must be an obstetrician or gynecologist and the other a specialist in the relevant area (for example, a specialist in uterine cancer).  During their assessment one of them may consult the patient's own doctor. 

If the two doctors involved refuse an abortion the woman will have the right to appeal, and that appeal will be heard by another two doctors of similar experience within seven days.

The first two scenarios relate to physical medical circumstances.   The third scenario relates to psychological circumstances.

In the third scenario, the pregnant woman does not have a physical medical problem but is suicidal because of the pregnancy and wants an abortion.  In such cases three doctors -- two psychiatrists and an obstetrician or gynecologist -- will be required to certify that an abortion is necessary to preserve the woman's life.  Their decision must be unanimous.

The woman who is claiming to be suicidal because of her pregnancy will be examined by the panel of three doctors to see first if there is a "real and substantial risk" of her taking her own life, and second, if the suicide risk can only be averted by abortion.  Again, the decision has to be unanimous.  If the three doctors do not all agree on the need for an abortion, the woman will be refused.

She has the right to appeal a refusal and her appeal will have to be heard within seven days by a review panel of three different doctors -- again two psychiatrists and an obstetrician or gynecologist -- who will make the final decision.

So what does all this amount to?  In the first two scenarios in physical medical cases, there is almost no change.  Irish hospitals already carry out abortions in the very rare cases where continuing a pregnancy poses an immediate threat to the life of a mother for physical medical reasons.  The only change is that in non-emergency cases, doctors now have more certainty that a longer-term risk to the life of the mother may justify an abortion at an earlier stage.

So would this have saved Savita Halappanavar?   Probably not, because in the two days when she was requesting a termination the doctors in the Galway hospital had not diagnosed her sepsis.  

Even if they had, under the proposed law a termination could not have begun unless the doctors decided that there was a real and substantial threat to her life.   Although we know that sepsis can be deadly, we also know that most cases can be treated successfully with antibiotics.  

So we are back to the old problem -- when is a risk to the life of the mother, as opposed to merely her health, real and substantial?  

The new law does not make this clearer.  Instead it leaves it to doctors to decide. 

It is, of course, the third scenario, in which the threat to the life of the mother is from suicide, that poses the greatest problems.  

Because this is seen as the way in which widespread abortion was introduced in other countries, many people and politicians here are worried that a claim to be suicidal could be used by women who wanted an abortion for other reasons and who were not genuinely suicidal.

To calm these fears, the government has made this third scenario the most restrictive of all, requiring a unanimous decision by three doctors -- two psychiatrists and an obstetrician.

Why does it need more than one psychiatrist to decide if a woman is suicidal?  The answer is it doesn't.  

And why does one of the three have to be an obstetrician? An obstetrician is not a specialist in psychiatric assessment. 

You could have a situation where the two psychiatrists say the woman is suicidal and the obstetrician says no.  Obviously this make no sense.

And if a woman is highly stressed and feeling panicky and suicidal, is she really going to be in a fit state to put her case to three doctors she does not know?  If she is turned down, is she going to feel mentally strong enough to cope with putting the case to another three doctors?  

The reality is that many women, especially young women, who find themselves in a crisis pregnancy situation find it difficult even to talk to their own doctor or their family doctor.

A lot of this makes very little sense from a physical or psychiatric point of view.  But it does make a lot of sense from a political point of view.

The government's aim is not to produce legislation that is rational, coherent and sensible from a medical point of view. Rather, it is to produce a legal framework on abortion that is so restrictive that it will get through the Dail (Parliament).  That's the real reason the proposed legislation is as convoluted as it is.  

Some of what is being proposed is so unbalanced that it is virtually certain to bring legal challenges in the courts.

For example, there is clear discrimination between women with a physical problem and women with a psychiatric problem, since in the first case an abortion can by permitted by two doctors but in the second case it will take three doctors.

There are many other shortcomings in the bill as revealed so far. For example, there are no proposals to allow abortion in rape or incest cases, even an incest case that might involve a very young teenager.  

Nor does it deal with cases of severe fetal abnormality or cases of fetal non-viability.  So women may still have to carry a non-viable fetus to full term, as they do here now, if there is no risk to their own life.    

What all this means is that Irish women who want an abortion, for whatever personal reasons, will still have to go to Britain to get them.  The only exceptions will be in cases where there is a medical need for an abortion because the woman's life may be in danger, or where a woman is suicidal.

To be fair to the government, they seem to be winning the argument so far, despite the opposition of the Catholic Church.   We had the nauseating sight last weekend of the lame duck Cardinal Sean Brady (a lame duck because of his record in dealing with child abuse by priests) attempting to lecture the government and the rest of us from the high moral ground.

As one politician here correctly observed, Brady and his crew don't occupy the high moral ground anymore and it will be a long time before they regain it, if ever.

Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny was saying last weekend that it was his duty to bring in legislation to give "clarity" to doctors.  But the great weakness in the outline of the proposed legislation is the continuing lack of certainty for doctors.  That may lead to a variation in interpretation by doctors. 

Defining the line where a risk to the health of a pregnant woman becomes a risk to her life is very difficult.  Some doctors may tolerate a high level of risk; some may certify an abortion even if the risk is relatively low and distant.  This may well lead to different outcomes for women in different hospitals and women being assessed by different doctors. 

One thing is clear.  Women will not be allowed to decide what level of risk they want to take in any of these situations.  So much for a woman's right to choose.   

It's abortion Irish-style. First you buy your ticket to the U.K. ...    

We’re total abortion hypocrites - proposals for new legislation were laughable

Irish Health Minister Dr. James Reilly

The abortion debate in Ireland gathered pace here last week as the outlines of what the government has in mind began to emerge.  The proposals are so ridiculous they are laughable.

We've always been known as the island of saints and scholars.  To that should now be added the word hypocrites. 

There are two main areas of concern about what is emerging.  The first is that there appears to be no proposal to alter the present framework in which abortion is only permissible here when there is a "substantial risk to the life, as opposed to the health, of the mother." 

In other words, because our Constitution gives a fetus a right to life equal to that of the mother, a pregnant woman has to be in real danger of dying before an abortion can happen here.

Of course this is merely theoretical for the vast majority of the thousands of Irish women every year who choose to have an abortion.  They turn their backs on the hypocritical mess we have created in the island of saints and scholars and go to Britain for an abortion. 

But it is a serious problem in the small number of cases where a pregnancy becomes a health crisis and a woman finds herself in an Irish hospital with no choice because of the legal situation here.  These cases, in extremis, can lead to tragedy as we have seen with Savita Halappanavar, the Indian woman who died in a Galway hospital last October after being refused a termination. 

As far as we know, there is no proposal from the government for legislation to clarify and extend the definition of what is a "substantial risk" that would allow an abortion.

How sick does a woman have to be?  If a woman herself feels seriously ill or feels her condition is worsening, should she have the right, with her doctors, to make a decision about a termination?    

At present, she has no voice in the decision, no right. It is solely a decision for doctors.  

And the government proposals, as far as we know, do nothing to change this. Instead, they continue to rely on the Medical Council here to issue advice to doctors defining the circumstances in which they can act.  

The problem is that without clarity in the legal framework, there is no way that either the Medical Council or individual doctors can know.  This is the situation, combined with a lot of incompetence, that killed Savita. 

Nothing in the government's proposals will change that. A woman will only be able to get an abortion here on medical grounds if her life is at "substantial risk." 

Nothing short of a referendum to reverse the 1980s constitutional amendment will enable a change in the law to alter this situation, and

Taoiseach (Enda Kenny) has ruled out another abortion referendum.  

That also means, of course, that a woman's right to choose does not exist here no matter what her condition or circumstances. The personal circumstances of a pregnant woman who wants an abortion cannot be taken into account here, as they are in other countries.  

In other jurisdictions, this consideration can culminate in a decision based on whether the continuation of an unwanted pregnancy may harm a woman's well being or make her suicidal. 

If a woman feels unable to continue with a pregnancy for personal reasons, and there is a possibility that she may self-harm if she is forced to continue, she is given a termination.   The rigor with which such an assessment is made varies between countries. 

In some countries, a woman merely has to state that she does not want to continue with a pregnancy and she is given an abortion as a matter of right. 

It is this aspect of the debate that is most contentious here.  The government is determined that there will be no "abortion on demand" here and that a threat of suicide will not be used to open the door to that possibility.  

The government has to act because it has been told by the European Court to clarify the circumstances in which women can have abortions in Ireland. 

Our Supreme Court's interpretation of the constitutional amendment 30 years ago said that if there is a "substantial risk" to the life of a woman she is entitled to an abortion here. 

The Supreme Court also made it clear that it was the Irish Parliament's job, by way of legislation, to define the circumstances in which this would apply.

Our gutless politicians over the years failed to do so.  Since women could go to Britain for an
abortion there was no pressure to do anything, and no need to sully our reputation as the island of saints and scholars with anything as mucky as abortion legislation.  

So nothing happened.  Successive governments dodged the issue.  And the current government is only tacking it because the European Court has told Ireland to do so, not because of the more recent Savita case.  

Because there is no proposal to change the "substantial risk to the life of the mother" condition for an abortion, there will be no increase in the miniscule number of abortions here on physical medical grounds. 

But the same test could allow abortion if it is established that a pregnant woman could be suicidal if she is denied a request for a termination. Clearly a possibility of suicide constitutes a "substantial risk to the life of the mother." 

What this means is that the extreme pro-life lobby that forced the amendment into the Constitution in the 1980s that gave equal right to life for both mother and fetus may now get exactly the opposite of what they were aiming for. 

It was the Supreme Court's interpretation of the amendment that produced the "substantial risk to the life of the mother" condition for legal abortion. 

So the big question here now, the one that is leading to feverish lobbying by the pro-life groups, is how you define when a woman is suicidal.  

What emerged over the past two weeks was that the Minister for Health James Reilly was proposing that a woman making a request would be examined by three medical consultants (senior doctors), one of who would be a psychiatrist who specializes in dealing with pregnant women.

The three would make a decision, and that decision would then be reviewed subsequently by a second panel of three doctors.   There would be an appeal system built into the process which could mean that a second group of six doctors would be involved. 

This means that a woman requesting an abortion might have to satisfy up to 12 doctors/psychiatrists before she would be given permission. 

This was so ludicrous it seemed almost comical, like some kind of grotesque bad joke.  It would be funny were it not such a serious matter.  People here shook their heads, muttering, “Only in Ireland!”

The organization of psychiatrists in Ireland immediately pointed out that there were only three psychiatrists in the whole country who specialize in caring for pregnant women.  They also said that their members did not want to be the country's "social police."  

The president of the organization even went so far as to say that forcing vulnerable women to undergo mandatory psychiatric assessments by up to 12 people was "abusive."

The government is now trying to row back and says that "only" six doctors would be involved.  But the whole thing is a farce. 

It is also completely unrealistic.  The vast majority of women who want to have abortions, whether suicidal or not, will prefer to go to Britain rather than be grilled by doctors here.  So the number of women seeking terminations on the grounds of potential suicide will be extremely low. 

Many Irish women who want to have an abortion because of a developing physical medical condition -- like cancer -- now go to Britain and have the termination there before coming home again for treatment for their condition.   This is one reason why the number of terminations for physical medical reasons here is low. 

Since there is no change being proposed to the "substantial risk" test, that situation is unlikely to change in the future.

So the island of saints and scholars will be able to go on claiming that there is little or no abortion in Ireland, even when we introduce new legislation to "allow" abortion here.  If the ludicrous proposals now being suggested become law, we will still have almost no abortion either for physical or mental reasons.

The government is promising legislation before the summer, although given the reaction to its proposals that may be wishful thinking.       

This shambles is the result of the government's desperate attempts to do the absolute minimum on abortion, despite their promises to sort out the situation.  Saving their own political skins is all they are concerned about, not the plight of Irish women who are caught in our hypocritical mess.