The Green Paper on Abortion offered no final solution to the long-running ethical controversy over the right to life of the unborn child that has been at the centre of Irish politics for nearly two decades, the Minister for Health and Children, Mr Cowen, said last night.
What it sought to do was to put the issue in context, not to lecture people, so that an informed electorate could make up its mind on where it stood on the issues. It was an extremely complex area, said Mr Cowen, fraught with difficulty and the Government was not seeking to impose any particular viewpoint.
Mr Cowen, who was speaking on the RTE programme Questions & Answers, said he had "voted for more referendums" on this issue "than the pro-Life people". He had voted to change the Constitution in the first referendum on abortion in 1983 and in the other referendums.
The basis of the current strategy, he said, was to ensure broad discussion on the abortion question. He urged everyone to read the document and not to be swayed by media headlines such as "the battle lines are drawn" or whatever. The discussion stage would be followed by referral to an all-party Dail committee to review the situation - and then further discussion.
Mr Cowen refused to be drawn on whether legislation or another referendum was envisaged by the Government - or whether any initiative along these lines was contemplated in the life of the present Dail.
He said much had been learned from past mistakes but it was not reasonable for the three independent TDs who normally supported the Government to demand a referendum.
"Show me the wording. It's all right for people with no executive responsibility to say `here's my position' without being able to come with an acceptable framework." All this would accomplish would be to repeat the mistakes of the past, he said.