Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Yes, so those words do not come into it and it is neither here nor there in the context of this discussion. The Minister is having it both ways in what he argues. He says the Bill must be prescriptive on exactly 28 days and no more, yet there is a 14-year sentence for any medical practitioner breaking the legislation. It is not right for the Minister to try to have this both ways. If he wants to be prescriptive, as Deputy Clare Daly said, about the period afterwards, he cannot tie the hands of the medical practitioners to such a degree that he keeps that chill factor on their backs, the monkey on their backs. That is my argument. I am not saying he cannot. He can do many things that I do not think he should do but he can do a lot more than the rest of us. I ask him to consider seriously leaving this within the medical guidelines rather than in primary legislation. If he is saying he has both medical and legal advice on this, again, we ask him to share it for us to see, please.