Walsh shows depth of his convictions – but what price will he pay for them?

Brian Walsh is under absolutely no illusion about the repercussions of the political bombshell he delivered on Monday morning when he became the first TD to state in public that he will not support the controversial abortion legislation being prepared by Government.

“It could herald the end of my membership of the party and of my political career. It does place me in a precarious position but I have done what I believe is right,” he told me earlier this week.

It means that when the Dail finally votes on the Protection of Maternal Life Bill in July (it’s going to take that long for it to go through all stages in the Oireachtas), Walsh will not follow his colleagues up the steep stairs of the Dail chamber and turn left into the Government lobby.

It’s a common enough site in British politics where backbench rebellions are frequent and sometimes lead to Government proposals being defeated. In many instances, there are no sanctions for the mutinous MPs.

But in Ireland it is a rare phenomenon. The culture of politics here is that a much stronger whip is imposed and defying the whip is a much bigger deal. In most cases, it leads to expulsion from the parliamentary party.

Occasionally, a member will be given a warning if he or she abstained. But as we have seen in this Dail, if you are a Government TD who votes against the Government you more or less lose the party whip. The Galway East TD Colm Keaveney knows all about that since last December.
It is rarer still for a TD to vote against the Government on a matter of conscience. In 1985, Dessie O’Malley was expelled for Fianna Fáil after supporting Coalition government legislation that liberalised the availability of contraceptives.

O’Malley was already in the wars with Fianna Fáil leader Charles Haughey, having lost the party whip in an internal party row over the Northern peace process. His decision to back Fianna Fail’s Coalition rivals led to his expulsion from the party, an event that eventually resulted in the establishment of the Progressive Democrats a year later.

The decision by Walsh is a very brave one and has been done in accordance with his own conscience. It took everybody by surprise, not least because he has not been seen as belonging to a prominent group of Fine Gael TDs who had publicly voiced their concerns about the legislation.

As he has made very clear, he has very strong convictions on the matter and rejects the premise of any legislation that includes provisions for a suicide threat, no matter how rigorously drafted. He set out his thinking to me earlier this week:

“The overwhelming medical evidence is that abortion is an inappropriate treatment for mental health issues.

“It looks like we are going to ignore the evidence. I have no problem with anything that gives guidance and clarity to doctors to make sure that a woman’s life is protected. I have no problem either with the repeal of the 1860 Offences Against the Person Act.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.