I also extend our solidarity and condolences to the communities, friends and above all the families of Ana Kriégel and Jastine Valdez, a girl and a young woman who have lost their lives so horribly and cruelly. We can only imagine the feelings and heartbreak of their loved ones at this most difficult time.

Three days from now, the people will go to the polls to vote on whether to repeal the eighth amendment. The only way we can help women facing crises is by returning a "Yes" vote and removing the eighth amendment from Bunreacht na hÉireann. In the course of this debate, it is important that we deal in fact. I have heard assertions from the "No" campaign and its spokespersons that what they call hard cases - for example, pregnancies resulting from rape or those involving diagnoses of fatal foetal anomalies - can be dealt with under the current constitutional framework. Such assertions are patently untrue. The very same people making this argument campaigned against the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013. That Act, now widely recognised as being wholly inadequate, allows doctors to intervene only where a woman's life is a risk. At that time, the people to whom I refer talked about the floodgates being opened and abortion becoming widely available. They were wrong on that matter just as they are wrong now not to acknowledge that the eighth amendment blocks any action to legislate for what they call the hard cases. How do we know this? We know it because we have tried.

Two separate Private Members' Bills on these issues were rejected on the advice of the Attorney General. Therefore, there is only one way we can help women in these circumstances and that is by returning a "Yes" vote on Friday, and to suggest otherwise is entirely disingenuous.

It is important also to remember that these are not exceptional or really hard cases; these are real women facing devastating scenarios and circumstances every day. The eighth amendment represents a real and ongoing threat to the health and lives of Irish women. It places the threat of criminal sanction against doctors for making medical decisions in the best interests of the health of their patients. Those are the facts. On Friday, we have what I regard as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to right a historic wrong, to learn from the misery - the alphabet soup of misery, the litany of misery - that the eighth amendment has brought us.

People are now being told that repeal of the eighth amendment will mean a free for all, with unrestricted access to abortion, abortion for no reason and abortion until birth. I ask the Taoiseach to address these false assertions and to set the record straight.

I thank the Deputy. I know there has been a lot of talk during this referendum campaign about those hardest of hard cases - young women who are just girls themselves who have become pregnant, often as a result of incest, women who are victims of rape or perhaps young couples or couples with a pregnancy that is very much wanted but who get the devastating diagnosis that the child they are expecting will not survive long outside of the womb, or will not make it to birth. Although I think any crisis pregnancy is a hard case, they are certainly among the hardest of cases.

I would contend that it is actually our hard laws that create those hard cases. The eighth amendment is too hard and forces a very hard law on Irish people and Irish women. Let us not forget what the eighth amendment states. The eighth amendment is eloquent and states that the right to life of the unborn is equal to that of the mother, so the right to life of a foetus of only a few days gestation is equal to the right to life of one's mother, sister or female friends and co-workers. Furthermore, the amendment says the State must vindicate that right, and that is why such harsh and tough penalties are applied.

I heard yesterday, on, I think, the "Six One News", Deputy Ó Cuív, who I respect as an individual, say we could somehow decriminalise the abortion pill or decriminalise women who seek abortions, or somehow reduce the penalty of 14 years imprisonment for women who have abortions or anyone who helps them to have an abortion. Of course, that is not true and we know it is not true because we had legislation in this House to decriminalise abortion and it was refused on constitutional grounds. We had proposals at the time. The Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill proposed to reduce that 14-year penalty and it could not be accepted for that reason.

I have been around the Cabinet table with the current and the previous Attorney General. I have listened to former Attorneys General like Michael McDowell and John Rogers very eloquently and very clearly make the case that the fact the eighth amendment states that the unborn is equal to a woman, at any gestation, and states that we must vindicate that right is what imposes these very hard laws on Ireland and these very hard cases. What I see now, in the final, dying days of this campaign, is a tactic by the "No" campaign to try to make out there is some sort of alternative amendment that we could put into our Constitution. I would ask those people, 30 years after that amendment was put into our Constitution, why in those 30 years has nobody put forward an alternative amendment that would deal with all of these hard cases, and why, only three days from the vote, are people suddenly raising that as a realistic argument and alternative. It is not a realistic alternative; it is just a tactic, and I believe the Irish people will see through it.

I thank the Taoiseach. I share his view that not alone hard law but bad law has given rise to so many hard cases. He wonders, not unreasonably, how it is that those who contend there is another route to deal with these cases have not come forward with that proposition.

There is no proposition because it is not legally possible unless we repeal the eighth amendment.