Somebody needs to tell the Labour Party that their problem with the voters in Meath East, or anywhere else in the country, has nothing to do with ‘communications’. By the time a quarter of the boxes were opened in the count centre in Ashbourne, and the extent of the collapse in Labour’s vote was becoming apparent, it was obvious the main story emerging from the Meath East byelection was going to be about a leadership crisis within Labour.

That crisis has been rumbling along beneath the surface since the resignation of Roisin Shortall in September 2012 because of her policy tussles with her senior Minister, James Reilly, in the Department of Health in which, in her own perception, she was cast adrift by the leadership of her own party. Party chairman, Colm Keaveney’s resignation of the party whip in the Dail in protest at the Budget cuts to social welfare created the next spike. Beaten into fifth place in Meath East, with 4.57% of the first preference vote – a drop of 16% on its 2011 General Election performance in that constituency – is yet another manifestation.

Embattled politicians tend to reach for  ‘communications failure’ as a key weapon in their defence armoury when things go politically pear-shaped for them.They’re invariably wrong. The issue is never about failing to get the message across to the public, or how to communicate it better. The problem is usually with the ‘message’ itself,  and whether the majority of voters accept or reject it. Thus, Labour’s crisis is not just about  false and egregious promises it peddled to the electorate, the infamous ‘Labour’s way or Frankfurt’s way, in the run-up to the last election in a last ditch effort to prevent a Fine Gael majority and secure its own place in the next administration; nor Pat Rabbitte’s damaging admission on national TV that such false promises are par for the course in the heat of an election campaign; nor that the ‘smaller party in government’ takes the flack for unpopular decisions in mid-term contests; nor displays of arrogance and swagger by the party leadership like the same Pat Rabbitte’s blustering, personalised attack on Colm Keaveney in the wake of the latter’s rejection of cuts to Child Benefit in the 2012 Budget. The roots of Labour’s crisis go much deeper. It’s about lack of substance, which, left unchecked will herald a complete meltdown in Labour’s public credibility.

As the party of protest in opposition, Labour’s analysis of the economic crisis facing Ireland never stretched too far beyond strident negativity and ready-made ‘rabbit out of the hat’ populist remedies, the sole purpose of which was to gain headlines and votes. Labour disdained policy on the grounds that most of the electorate didn’t pay much attention to it. Anyway, the media was more interested in personality-based drama than policy platforms. Fair enough – most people, even at the best of times, have more on their minds than the policy prescriptions of politicians. As for the media, political drama inevitably trumps detailed assessment of party policy positions. Moreover, in opposition, parties and their leaders can say pretty much what they like without having to worry about the consequences. In our system, it is the government, not the opposition, that is held to account by the electorate for the outcome, good or bad, of its policies.

But there is a catch. Poorly defined, badly researched and populist-oriented ‘fantasy’ policy positions, that amount to no more than the blather and bluster of a hastily composed, flawed, analysis, peppered with catchy slogans to maximise media attention, fall apart pretty quickly once they are confronted with the reality of implementation. Labour’s problem is not that they don’t face up to their larger partner in government enough, or that Eamon Gilmore needs to take a tougher line with Enda Kenny. It’s that if, and when, they do, they appear to have no coherent alternative policy analysis to put on the table. Their policy cupboard is bare. They emptied it themselves a long time ago.

That’s not to say that Fine Gael’s performance has been up to much. Far from it, with policy failures mounting in key areas of the economy, employment, taxation, health, environment, policing and justice; no commitment or intention to reform and nepotism and cronyism as rife in our system as they ever were. Yet those cohorts of the electorate, among them young voters, public servants, the mildly progressive ‘knowledge class’, and the floating voter whose preference drifted from a scratch for Fianna Fail to a rub for Labour in GE 2011, expected that Labour should be more than a pale shadow of their government partners, in attitude, approach and policy imagination.That somewhere beneath the hustle and bustle of seeking to maximise their own vote, and potential power, in any new post-election government, Labour had a strategy and vision of what sort of Ireland should ultimately emerge from this present crisis. What’s more, they expected Labour in government to articulate that vision and embody that strategy.

What has emerged is a Labour Party that is incapable of articulating a vision or strategic direction for recovery, because they simply don’t have one. The poverty of their analysis is manifest in the defence they consistently provide of government policy choices; and their critique  - usually dismissive and disrespectful – of any alternative perspectives or ideas. In terms of the economic policy, Labour act as  the praetorian guard of Fine Gael. When it comes to social reform, their focus is on issues, like gay marriage, that whilst important in themselves, are well down the order of public priorities.

If you have nothing of substance to communicate, then the volume of your communications doesn’t matter. Indeed, increasing the volume may be counterproductive. Turning up the volume on the wrong issues is  self-destructive, and crass efforts at promoting your own distinctivness are worst of all. That ‘last ditch’ stunt to woo the Meath electorate  provides as good an example as any of political desperation and crassness in full flight.

The Labour leadership, collectively, has a lot of work to do to restore trust and credibility with voters and prevent any further erosion in popular support for the party. A good place to start might be to take constructive criticism on board, rather than filtering out any views that fail to tally with its own limited imagination. The Meath bylection result positions Labour as a weakened force within government. That’s no good for them, and not much help to the rest of us either.

 A poll released today by the Pro-Life Campaign seeks to ‘challenge the notion that there is broad middle ground support for abortion in Ireland.’ This polls claims to show that two-thirds of Irish people want ‘legal protection of the unborn’ and suggests that this means Irish people are against legalised abortions. This should surprise some as it follows on from a IpsosMRBI poll in the Irish Times recently which showed a substantial majority in favour of legalised abortions in a variety of circumstances.

So what’s happening? Does this show that you can get a poll to say anything you want as the clip from Yes, Prime Minister suggests? Or is the polling methodology of companies so flawed that we get results that can fluctuate wildly even when the underlying opinions in society are reasonably stable?

Well it’s not the latter. Opinion polls results on voting, though sometimes appear volatile (especially when there’s no election on the horizon and people aren’t as focussed on the question) are remarkably similar when taken at similar times. Polling companies have improved their methodologies, and while there are ongoing debates about issues such as weighting for past vote and likelihood to vote, the polling companies in question, Millward Brown and IpsosMRBI, are reputable and conform to high standards.

What is probably at issue here is the wording of the question, the interpretation of the results and the ‘context’ of the question. Sometimes we might see an advocacy group ask a number of questions and pick just those that suit its position, discarding any that don’t. In general one should be suspicious of an advocacy group-sponsored polls.

The questions in this case were problematic. Abortion is a complex issue, and asking one or two complicated questions doesn’t help add clarity. People think differently about abortion in different circumstances, and so pro-choice advocates make much of questions in which as much as 90 per cent of US respondents say they favour that abortion should be legal. In fact the support is lower when circumstances are specified.

So it makes sense to clearly specify the circumstances in a number of clear, concise questions. This is what the Irish Times poll did – though the health question was probably vaguer than it should have been and was, I think, misinterpreted by some to mean suicide.

What were the Pro-Life campaign’s questions?

Q1. In current medical practice in Ireland, the doctor treats the expectant mother and her baby as two patients and does his/her best to safeguard both in a crisis situation. Do you consider that this practice should be protected and safeguarded by law or not?

66% answered YES, 15% NO, 19% No Opinion.

There are a number of problems with this question. It’s pretty long, which may not be a major problem, though it’s usually best avoid long questions, especially abstract ones. One might also object to the use of the word ‘baby’ instead of foetus, but again, I’d let them pass on this. A more serious problem is that it describes a situation which it says is the status quo position in Ireland, though many would take issue with that. So if asked ‘are you in favour of the current social welfare system which protects the most vulnerable in society?’, what is one’s answer to be. Yes, but it doesn’t. That’s not an option.

The question is framed to offer everything desirable, and ask the respondent would you like to retain it? ‘Yes,of course, but…’ It’s perhaps surprising that only 66% answered yes. Another problem is that it oversimplifies the situation. It doesn’t ask difficult choices of the respondent. Motherhood and apple pie? Of course.

But you can’t always have both. The rights of the two come into conflict and whose rights take precedence is precisely the issue Irish society has to grapple with.

The second question is arguably worse.

Q2. Are you in favour of, or opposed to constitutional protection for the unborn that prohibits abortion but allows the continuation of the existing practice of intervention to save a mother’s life in accordance with Irish medical ethics?

Result: 63% answered YES, 19% NO, 18% No Opinion.

It has the same problems we saw in the first question, but the added problem that it asks questions on what are two dimensions. So the first half asks about the constitutional prohibition on abortion (which since X case is not really in place) and the desire to save a mother’s life (which is also moot).Which part are the respondents saying yes to? The two issues should be separated out.

The Pro-Life campaign say that they were providing ‘context’ that was lacking in the Irish Times questions. They say that ‘important ethical distinctions are clarified for the benefit of respondents’. But one might say that the context was misleading, and the ethical distinctions were muddied.

A further problem is with the interpretation. The Pro-Life campaigns press release, which was heavily drawn on in reports in the Irish Independent and Irish Times, a ‘sizeable majority support legal protection of the unborn’. This is true, but it doesn’t, as they suggest, contradict the findings of the Irish Times poll. Favouring the legal protection of the unborn doesn’t mean one is against abortion – it just suggests that Irish people want rules governing abortion. The Irish Times poll asked more questions, more simply and more directly on the nuances in the debate. It is one I’d use if I wanted to know what Irish people think about this issue.

Connect with Eoin on Twitter @AnMailleach

Much of the debate about the bill took place in the Seanad. There’s an interesting section of the debate where McDowell said the term “honest defence” was needed because the previous term had been “fair defence,” which invited juries to speculate about the fairness of a harsh opinion rather than its grounding in facts. The Irish Mail might well have preferred the fairness terminology.

Anyway, Senator David Norris was strongly opposed to the honest opinion defence — because he thought it was so broad that it could cover any opinion as long as some appropriate qualifier was added. But the then Minister was adamant –

If one makes a defamatory comment by reference to facts that are not in contest or can be proven to be true, holding it as an honest opinion is a full defence. It is an important part of freedom of speech. For example, if I said that because Senator Norris did A, B and C, he is unsuitable to be a lecturer in Trinity College Dublin or a Member of the Oireachtas and that he is a total disgrace and a dishonest man, my opinions would be based on facts. If people can refer my opinion to facts in respect of which I am in a position to prove or that are accepted as true, my statement is an expression of opinion.

Opinion does not defame. That I have a clearly identifiable opinion of someone does not damage that person because people are entitled to say that it is only an opinion. It is not a slander or a libeller’s charter to distinguish between statements of fact that are false and honest judgments arrived at by people. If we were to trim down this measure, we would make a serious mistake.

Hopefully Mr McDowell is impressed with the first major application of this distinction between fact and judgment in Irish case law.

Dr Martin Mansergh said Gerry Adams’s assertion on the RTÉ Radio programme This Week that the governments of that time refused to push or promote the repeal of the [Government of Ireland] Act, partitioning Ireland, was at complete variance with the record. Dr Mansergh said former taoiseach Albert Reynolds had always said the Government of Ireland Act would have to be on the table with Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution. “The demand, which was acceded to, was maintained right up to the Good Friday agreement and was never taken off the agenda,” Dr Mansergh added.

Here’s Bertie Ahern speaking at the 1998 Arbour Hill commemoration, celebrating what had been achieved by putting the 1920 Act on the table –

That is the clear consequence of the British-Irish Agreement, and the repeal of the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, the partition act, which with imperious arrogance and futility declared in Section 75 in the middle of the war of independence that ‘The supreme authority of the Parliament of the United Kingdom shall remain unaffected and undiminished over all persons, matters, and things in Ireland and every part thereof’. That will now be consigned to history.

It’s good to know that the mortal threat to the Republic of Ireland, namely a claim of authority by the London Parliament, which had hung over our heads up to 1998, was finally removed by the Good Friday Agreement.

The fact is, Mansergh is playing word games. The Government of Ireland Act never took effect in the Irish Free State, later the Republic, because it was superseded by the Treaty. And it steadily became obsolete in Northern Ireland, especially with the abolition of the original Stormont Assembly in 1972. The hyping up of Section 75 was instead a stunt to create a seeming quid pro quo for getting rid of Articles 2 and 3. Most of all, the Good Friday Agreement clearly recognizes the reality of Northern Ireland as a non-failed political entity — the ultimate rebuke to Mansergh’s favourite boss,  the early 1980s vintage of Charlie Haughey.

Sometimes it feels like we all woke up one morning and there we were – right back to the 1980s. Lost in a decade of rampant unemployment and emigration; where the only news on the economic front is the bad news of still burgeoning deficits and an unsustainably mounting sovereign debt burden; flaky banks and building societies teetering on the verge of collapse and looking to be bailed out by the state; and of course, the lingering socially corrosive impact of a bitter debate surrounding the ‘right to life’ amendment to the Constitution. Northern Ireland was a fine old mess in those days too – a completely failed political entity; which is much what it increasingly is beginning to resemble as the promise of the Peace Process is overtaken by unresolved political tensions. The stuff of nightmares, those old intractable issues. And they’re all back. Only this time it’s even worse. So pity the government.

 According to Pat Rabbitte, the media need to change their ways and treat politics and politicians more kindly. Otherwise, he said, we’re opening the doors to dictatorship; or words to that effect. Thing is, the media, particularly the mainstream print and broadcast sectors, have arguably been far too kind to this government. News issues are faithfully reported in whatever way they are framed by members of the government directly or their spinmeisters. Comment and analysis is carefully balanced. Coherent critique of government policy, in each and every area you can think of, is insufficient. When it does appear, too often it takes the form of a focus on personality or interpersonal conflicts; not rigorous scrutiny of whatever policy is proposed and the alternatives that are available to the choices made by Ministers. In short, the media has been far too inclined to accept the government’s ‘the Troika made us do it’ or ‘the mess we inherited leaves us no choice’ or ‘we’ve lost our sovereignty’ old guff and repeat it each time, as if it represented some new insight into our troubles as opposed to a pathetic evasion of responsibility for its own bad decisions.

Yet pity the government nonetheless. The next six months could be the making or breaking of this Coalition’s credibility. It has no choice but to hold a by-election in Meath East following the tragic death of Fine Gael TD and Junior Minister, Shane McEntee, within the next six months, which throws a number of national, as opposed to local, issues into high relief.

Consider the prospect from a Fine Gael perspective: the abortion issue will likely still be in play from both pro-choice and anti-choice perspectives, regardless of whether or not the government has published its legislation. The public will have received their so-called housing valuations from Revenue for Michael Noonan’s property tax, which will have done little to lighten their mood. The effects of the budget cuts on provision of services will have become apparent to all and sundry. Whatever deal the government may have secured from Europe on the debt burden by that point – most likely confined to some sort of stretched out period for repayment of the Anglo promissory notes at a low interest rate – will be publicly contentious to say the least of it. But failure to achieve something, anything, on the debt front by the March deadline for the next promissory note payment is politically inconceivable. As for Labour, the continuing strains within that party do not look set to stabilise any time soon. Labour has little or no prospect of winning the by-election; the best it can hope for is to make a credible show that augurs well for Dominic Hannigan’s chances of retaining his parliamentary presence in the next general election.

The government parties may seek to shrug off attaching any significance to the Meath by-election. It makes no difference to parliamentary arithmetic if the Fine Gael seat is lost to Fianna Fail, as appears the most likely prospect on current opinion poll numbers. But it comes close to that critical starting point of countdown to the next local elections and the point in the electoral cycle where first term TDs begin to assess their chances of being one term wonders or settling in to their political careers for the long haul.

Further, with the mix of issues in play, the electors of Meath East are being asked to cast a verdict on the government’s overall strategy and performance. And if they feel, like so many of the rest of us do, that they’ve been cast back to the nightmare years of the 1980s, that verdict may not be a kind one.

As reported on the front page of today’s Irish Daily Mail, while all this was going through in the Budget, the Minister for the Environment, Phil Hogan, was on his middle-east trip in Doha to save the world from climate change.  Defenders of the Minister charge the Mail with negative nitpicking and conflating unrelated issues. They may indeed have a point. However, the Minister’s absence from the Dail on Budget Day was notable, and since the date of the Budget as well as the date of the climate conference were well-known in advance, the Minister’s judgement in opting for a foreign assignment is questionable.

The Irish delegation to Doha is reputed to have cost the Irish taxpayer in the region of €30,000. It is arguable that it required the attendance of a senior Minister, either for the short speech which Phil Hogan delivered at the Conference proper or for any trade promotion duties that were arranged around such an Irish ministerial presence in the region. A junior Minister, such as the New Era Minister, Fergus O’Dowd, might have fitted the bill for Doha just as well.

The politics of this latest cut to services for the elderly are awful: as burgarlies rise, horrific reports of elderly people being attacked in their homes become more prevalent, and a crisis apparently looms in our policing service, reports that funding for personal alarm services for the elderly have now been halved only add to public cynicism that government rhetoric about  ‘protecting the most vulnerable in our society’ is newspeak at its worst: this government couldn’t care less about the ‘vulnerable’.

But nobody should be too surprised that a scheme that ostensibly protects lives and is an important part of the support infrastructure that enables older people to continue to live independently in their homes has had its funding chopped in half. Such an eventuality was flagged by the then Junior Health Minister, Roisin Shorthall, in a Seanad Adjournment debate, as far back as 15 November, 2011. In response to queries about the scheme from Senator Fidelma Healy Eames, the then Minister stated:

“I am pleased to have an opportunity to address the Seanad on the benefits of socially monitored alarms for older people to promote independent living. This year alone the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government will assist over 7,000 older people by providing grants for this vital equipment.

“The new seniors alert scheme was introduced on 24 May 2010 and replaced the scheme of community support for older people. The scheme provides grant support towards the cost of supplying and installing items of safety and security equipment to enable older people without sufficient means to continue to live securely in their homes with confidence, independence and peace of mind. The eligibility criteria have remained broadly the same as they were under the CSOP but community groups have been given improved guidance and information on how to determine eligibility. This is central to the improvements introduced in the new scheme. The CSOP was confined to those aged 65 years and older who were considered vulnerable and this left a lot to the discretion of volunteers. Community groups requested greater guidance in this regard and the revised scheme states more explicitly the criteria to be used.

“Generally, a person will be eligible for grant support if he or she is aged 65 years or older, of limited means and resources, living alone or with another person who meets the eligibility criteria and is able to benefit from the equipment supplied. Grants may be provided towards the cost of supplying and installing equipment. The grants include up to €240 for personal monitored alert systems with pendant, up to €75 for monitored smoke detectors, €100 for monitored carbon monoxide detectors, up to €50 for additional pendants or reinstallation, as much as €120 for internal emergency lighting, and €50 for external security lighting.

“Funding of €2.35 million has been provided for the seniors alert scheme in 2011. The Minister anticipates that some 7,000 older persons will benefit from the scheme this year. To the end of October 2011, some €2.054 million in grant support has been provided to 374 community groups for the provision of items of safety and security equipment to 6,539 older people.”

All good and well. But the real meat was contained in the final two paragraphs of Roisin Shortall’s reply:

“The changes introduced as part of the review of the scheme have made a significant impact on its operation and availability. The Minister is very conscious of the benefits of the seniors alert scheme, which provides security and the ability to achieve independent living at home. He will do his utmost to ensure that this scheme can continue into the future. This will be in the context, however, of reduced funding being made available to Departments in 2012. Personal security is a critical factor in people being able to remain in their homes and in many cases this has been a life-saver for people.

The Minister will take into account the benefits of this scheme in promoting independent living for so many and the possibility of doing this at a limited cost to the State in any future decisions on funding of the seniors alert scheme.”

UPDATE: Congratulations to the lobby groups on behalf of older people in our society who worked so hard and effectively to secure a U-turn by the government on this issue, as announced in recent days. Well done!

According to the newly released record of the meeting, he continued: “Argentina was certainly responsible for starting the conflict in the first instance but we feel that after that the matter should have been dealt with in the United Nations – the Security Council – and through negotiations.” The issue had “caused us some difficulty” in Ireland, he said, adding: “The EEC/Ten had wished to impose sanctions. We were prepared to do so but only as long as they were in support of political and diplomatic action. “Once it became clear that the UK was not prepared to pursue this course but had switched to a military approach we felt we had no option but to withdraw from sanctions. “Our approach, therefore, is that Argentina was wrong in the first place and that it should withdraw. This would mean a general cessation of hostilities. “A solution should then be found through the United Nations, the UN secretary general and the Security Council,” Haughey is reported as saying.

As he recognized, Mrs Thatcher was determined to pursue a military solution, and Ireland’s reluctant position was causing major friction, with the radical idea being floated (privately) in the UK of withdrawing de facto citizenship rights for Irish citizens resident in the UK, which had existed since 1922. So, can it be as Deaglán de Bréadún says, “that it could be argued that, for all his well-publicised failings as a political leader, this was, in the Churchillian phrase, Charlie’s finest hour?”

The big problem is that Ireland was not actually alone in its lack of enthusiasm for the way the Falklands conflict was headed. Among the peripheral Atlantic countries with ancestral links to the UK that were not too keen was … the United States of America! The Daily Telegraph has a good account of the deep divisions within the US government about how to handle it, with President Reagan’s instinctive leaning to Maggie’s position running into a significant view in Washington that their longer-term interests lay with keeping Argentina and Latin America more generally onside; the USA’s western hemisphere roots were definitely showing. And as one reads through the full package of IT articles on the crisis, it becomes clear that there was a large group of unhappy countries looking to slow down the rush to war, including Italy and Spain. Certainly knowing in hindsight that GUBU was just months away puts a touch of class on Charlie’s positioning on this issue. But overall it’s a ledger still too deep in the red to be rescued by one stance that was well within the logic of Irish foreign policy.

The purpose of the Twenty-fifth Amendment of the Constitution (Protection of Human Life in Pregnancy) Bill is to provide a secure and effective constitutional basis for a legislative approach to the protection of human life in pregnancy. The proposals are designed to ensure that women can continue to receive all necessary medical treatment during pregnancy, while at the same time ensuring maximum protection of the unborn and maintaining a clear prohibition on abortion.

The mechanism proposed is that a referendum will be held to approve the insertion into Article 46 of the Constitution of the text of proposed amendments to Article 40.3 of the Constitution. These are (i) a new subsection 4º in Article 40.3 to provide that the life of the unborn in the womb will be protected in accordance with the Protection of Human Life in Pregnancy Act, 2002; and (ii) a new subsection 5º in Article 40.3 to provide that any future proposal to amend or repeal the Protection of Human Life in Pregnancy Act, 2002 will have to be approved by the people in a referendum … The new law will, therefore, define “abortion” in a way that clearly excludes such ethically legitimate procedures from being termed an abortion for the purposes of our criminal law. Doctors may provide any medical treatment which, in their opinion, is necessary to safeguard the life of a pregnant woman. The doctor’s opinion must be formed in good faith and there is an explicit requirement that regard be had to the need to preserve unborn human life, where practicable. It is important to emphasise that doctors, when treating a pregnant woman, make every effort to safeguard not only her life, but that of her baby. This will not change after the passage of the Act.

Questions for the current leader of Fianna Fail given the context of the Savita Halappanavar case: do you still believe that legislation to cover what doctors can do in the case of life-threatening pregnancies needs to be embedded in the Constitution, and do you believe that the formula you outlined in 2001 for guiding such treatment is still relevant?

The ombudsman found the newspaper had failed to “distinguish adequately between fact and comment”, and the breaches were “capable of causing grave offence”.

On 7 November 2012, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland issued a reminder to broadcasters about the requirements of election coverage. The context was an imminent referendum on an amendment to the constitution to strengthen children’s rights — an amendment with overwhelming support in the legislature. Among the issues stressed by the Authority –

Broadcasters choosing to provide coverage of elections and/or referenda should develop mechanisms that are open, transparent and fair to all interested parties. These mechanisms should be considered and developed at an early stage and information on the approach being adopted should be available to all interested parties in advance. Decisions in respect of editorial content rest with broadcasters. Accordingly, it will be a matter for individual broadcasters to decide the most effective way to reflect all the interests involved in an election and/or referendum. In so deciding, broadcasters should be cognisant of the differences between the different types of elections and between elections and referenda. For example, in an election, the electoral interests may be reflected on a constituency, regional or national basis, however, in a referendum, all sides to the debate should be afforded a fair hearing.

In practice, this means that anyone with any opinion, regardless of its base in reality, has a right to access to the public airwaves, as long as there is an actual substantive debate with constitutional consequences taking place.

And before anyone says, ah but Myers fell foul of the rules for print media while the latter rule applies to broadcast, think about the underlying message: Someone who types up an opinion in the old fashioned way and has it printed in the famously money-losing and commercially operated press, which no one has to buy or read, has to ensure that his opinions are backed by “facts”, but as long as there’s an election on, it’s a free-for-all in terms of access to the public airwaves and the license-fee funded state broadcaster, with an always-on radio or television in every house in the country.

By the way, while the government has to allocate public assets to “all sides”, it can’t spend any money advocating for its own position already endorsed by the legislature.  In addition, the vagueness of the guidelines for referendum coverage and government advocacy are an invitation to legal action, with the salaries and fees of everyone involved ultimately backstopped by a state that is borrowing from the IMF and EU to pay its bills — with a little money left over to make sure print media opinion columnists aren’t making a nuisance of themselves. Hopefully our overseas paymasters find these antics amusing.

Whatever the outcome of investigations into the circumstances that led to the death of Savita Halappanavar in University College Hospital Galway, the failure of successive governments since 1983 to legislate on abortion is no longer acceptable. The problem is not just that all parties, and party leaders, shied away from legislating following the 1992 X case ruling. As highlighted by the judge in that case, nine years after the constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to life of the unborn, there was no legislative framework to provide it with meaning or effect. So it’s not twenty years of inaction we have to complain of. More like, thirty years on, as a result of political cowardice, appaling uncertainty persists. Inevitably, and tragically, a case would arise which would light a fire under the pusillanimity of our political elite.

The original mistake of party political leadership was to proceed with the abortion referendum in 1983. There was no great popular demand for such an amendment; no cases before the courts that impelled it; no imminent prospect of any event that might force a change in Ireland’s existing abortion law. Moreover , the political class in general had little or no understanding of the issues involved. A cursory review of the Oireacthas debates at the time confirms that. The 1983 Dail debates were laced with vitriol, moral grand- standing and party political posturing, but principally notable for their confusion and lamentable ignorance of the complexity of the issues at stake.

Two years earlier, in April 1991, the so-called pro-life movement had targeted the leaders of the two main parties, C.J Haughey of Fianna Fail and Garret Fitzgerald of Fine Gael. Promises were extracted from both leaders to introduce a pro-life amendment to the Constitution at the earliest opportunity. Otherwise, Ireland was on the road to ruin, to a regime of ‘abortion on demand’. Sooner, rather than later, the 1861 Offences against the Person Act, which prohibited abortion, would be challenged in the courts. Or else those dreadful Europeans, in one guise or another, would force abortion upon us. Only a constitutional ‘right to life’ for the unborn could forestall the inevitable. At that point, some 4,000 Irish women a year were travelling to the UK for abortions.

The early 1980s were a period of political turmoil, which saw several rapid changes of government. No less than three Attorney Generals wrestled with the task of framing an acceptable wording for the proposed amendment. In the ferment of the 1982 general election, further promises were made to the pro-life lobby by Haughey and Fitzgerald that, whatever government was formed, the constitutional amendment would be put to the people before the end of March 1983. When Fine Gael was returned to office with the Labour Party, the Attorney General, Peter Sutherland, considered the wording on offer from the previous administration. He concluded that it was deeply flawed.

With the alarm bells ringing, Deputy Alan Shatter presciently told the Dail on 17 February 1983, “ I have no doubt that if [the amendment] in its present form becomes part of our Constitution it will essentially secure a constitutional judgment in the not too distant future requiring the House to enact legislation to permit women to have abortions.” The 1992 ‘X’ case would prove him right.

In the same debate,then Minister for Health, Labour’s Barry Desmond summarised of the flaws in the amendment and what would likely happen if it was passed. “It will lead inevitably to confusion and uncertainty,” Desmond said, “ not merely amongst the medical profession, to whom it has of course particular relevance, but also amongst lawyers and more specifically the judges who will have to interpret it. Far from providing the protection and certainty which is sought by many of those who have advocated its adoption it will have a contrary effect… a doctor faced with the dilemma of saving the life of the mother, knowing that to do so will terminate the life of “the unborn” will be compelled by the wording to conclude that he can do nothing.”

In the intervening thirty years, the Dail archive records over one thousand entries for abortion, including parliamentary motions and questions and two further proposed constitutional amendments in 1992 and 2002 which sought to overturn the X case judgement but were defeated in the popular vote. By 2001, the UK office of national statistics suggested more than 6,000 women providing Irish addresses had abortions in Britain the previous year.

The solution of the Ahern regime was to add to that statistic, as then Dail deputy, Michael D. Higgins, put it : “The Government has decided to go to the people to ensure that, in the rare cases where a woman is prone to suicide, she will go to England.”

As the now President of our Republic observed, “Is it not an extraordinary situation where the Constitution is to be used as some kind of trailer before the main film? …What is happening is that the Government, being gutless, refuses to legislate in accordance with the X case.”

‘Gutless’ just about sums it up. Previous governments may have got away with it, but the current Government has nowhere left to hide.