Today, I also want to give my condolences to the family of Seamus Carroll and his colleagues and friends. He was a very pleasant, chatty usher and he will be missed.

I want to talk about the decision to light up buildings, including the Mansion House and Trinity College Dublin, for International Safe Abortion Day. It is an oxymoron in that it puts two contradictory words together. The Mansion House is a public building and everyone should feel welcome and represented by it. The National Women’s Council of Ireland, NWCI, co-ordinated this initiative, but that organisation does not represent women as a whole. Its members have not been elected and they have no public mandate. Women are not a hive mind who all believe the exact same thing and the National Women's Council should recognise this. It is funny that when women were commenting on its social media posts last night disagreeing with the lightning up of public buildings, the NWCI turned off comments and deleted comments, silencing other women's voices. There was no outcry from the NWCI when a woman in County Donegal was forced by her partner to take abortion tablets against her will. That person has been prosecuted and sentenced since. Women like me who share a different opinion or who differ from what these groups decide is the correct perspective are treated as though we are social pariahs. That is wrong. I try to respect the views of others and other women even though I fundamentally disagree with them. The reality is that the NWCI only wants women's voices if it is an opinion it agrees with. As an NGO that receives funding from the taxpayer, it should be accountable to the public. It is also surprising to see a Fianna Fáil mayor give the go-ahead for this because I know it is not a position shared by many of the members of the Fianna Fáil Party. The Mansion House was essentially used as a vehicle to promote abortion. I think we are forgetting that somebody dies in an abortion. Public buildings should not be used as billboards for only one side of a deeply contested issue.

I join my colleagues on congratulating Senator Brady on his first response to the Order of Business. Anois, the Acting Leader, an Seanadóir Brady.