Abortion Bill urgent? So TDs take another week’s holidays

DESPITE the Government promise to proceed with abortion legislation as quickly as possible the Oireachtas is on another holiday this week.

The Dáil and Seanad are shut until Tuesday June 12, nine days from now, and four weeks later their usual two-and-a-half-month holiday kicks in, from July 12.

There were some indications that the Government will urge TDs and senators to rush through a second stage of the Bill and ask them to stay an extra week, until July 19. But this has not been agreed.

And despite soft assurances from politicians, there is little chance of complex and highly contentious legislation being signed into law by the President by the end of the year. When the Dáil returns at the end of September it will be engrossed in the preparations for the 2019 Budget, which will be announced in the second week of October.

Since this is the last of three budgets under the Confidence and Supply agreement with Fianna Fáil it is likely to see the most charged negotiations yet between Micheál Martin and Leo Varadkar’s sides.

On top of this, the urgency on bringing in abortion legislation relies on no eruptions in politics. Last November and December saw TDs plunged into the controversy over Justice and Frances Fitzgerald.

A Government TD said: ‘If they really thought it was possible to get this through they would have dropped these holidays. But they know it’s not possible, so there was no point in ruining our holidays.’

THERE is no chance of that adoption legislation being progressed this week. The Dáil isn’t sitting at all, which – in the context of all the bleating and blather about the need for speedy legislation – is a bit rich. It may sit for an extra week before the summer recess to debate the abortion legislation following the successful campaign to repeal the Eighth Amendment – but surely striking while the iron is hot and cancelling this week’s leave, would have been a more sensible proposition?