TD HITS OUT AT HARRIS

DUNDALK TD Peter Fitzpatrick has hit out at his former party colleague Health Minister Simon Harris for his failure to meet with a group of TDs who are opposed to the wording of the abortion bill going through the Dail.

The former Fine Gael TD was one of twelve TDs who voted against the second stage of the Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy Bill in the Dail last week.

Along with Deputies Mattie McGrath, Michael Collins, Carol Nolan, and, Danny Healy Rae, he issued a statement claiming: ‘We as a country, we are on the brink of introducing one of the most extreme abortion laws anywhere in the world.’

They accused the Government of doing everything possible to impede and stand in the way of proper scrutiny of its proposal. ‘In order to railroad through its legislation, the Gov- ernment keeps trotting out the line that the public have spoken in the referendum and that as ministers they are simply carrying out the wishes of the public,’ they stated. ‘Nothing could be further from the truth. The public voted to remove the Eighth Amendment from the Constitution. They did not vote in favour of the Bill in its current form.’

They criticised Minister Harris for not meeting a group of TDs and Senators to discuss ‘ the deep seated fears and concerns of literally hundreds of GPs regarding the proposed new law that compels GPs and other healthcare professionaFitls to play a role in facilitating abortions that have nothing at all to do with medicine or healthcare.’ They also complained the Bill made no provision ‘for proper freedom of conscience protections for doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals to opt out of being involved in abortions.’ Faoi Gheasa on their way to winning the School Stars 2018