Kate O’Connell TD has a lot to say and she does not hold back.
In the past year, O’Connell has called for the removal of tax on condoms, for free contraception to be made available to women, for repeal of the Eighth Amendment, for the legalisation of cannabis, for the decriminalisation of all drugs and for a crack-down on alternative medical practitioners profiting from vulnerable patients.
It is not until you consider how reserved many politicians are on abortion, cannabis, contraception, homelessness, healthcare and misogyny, the social and economic issues that fire debate amongst liberal and conservative society, that the difference between O’Connell and others in Leinster House is tangible.
The outspoken nature of O’Connell’s political personality is one which has propelled her into a spotlight that few other TDs occupy.
TDs’ seats can be won by 5-10% of their constituency. In an electoral system like Ireland’s it is unsurprising that politicians are reluctant to marginalise anyone. So when a political figure speaks openly and criticises her own party as well as the opposition, it’s disconcerting.
O’Connell is meticulous, she notices that the cup in her hand was scalded before her tea was poured, she is exact in the folding of her coat as she sits down and the tiny hole in her left nostril where once there was a piercing is barely perceptible.
She has come to the JOE studios to talk about three things, abortion, drugs and bogus medicine. As a pharmacist, these topics broadly suit her area of knowledge, as a politician she has pointedly made her professional background work for her.
O’Connell’s voice on the health committee during the medicinal cannabis debate was one of scepticism over a bill which referred to patients as consumers and measured the dosage of medicinal cannabis in ounces rather than the orthodox medical measurement of milligrams.
But it was not for her legislative work that O’Connell briefly became a household name. After a Fine Gael private party meeting in November, O’Connell came to national attention for printing and handing out screen grabs of abusive tweets directed at her and other female politicians by Barry Walsh, a vice-president of Fine Gael.
Kate O’Connell’s prominence had been coming for a while before the Barry Walsh moment, as a seat on the Eighth Amendment committee placed her at the centre of a debate that has hounded and fractured her party since it was first proposed as a constitutional amendment in 1981.
As it was then, it is now and fissures in political parties are beginning to show as both the leader of both Fine Gael and of Fianna Fáil, are refusing to be drawn on their position on the recommendations of the Eighth Amendment committee and the Citizens’ Assembly.
“Abortion is not an abstract concept, abortion is an issue facing women every day in this country,” says O’Connell.
O’Connell’s own experience of crisis during pregnancy came when she was 30 years old and her foetus was given a 10% chance of survival.
“I won’t get upset about it if you ask me, she says. “I thought ignorantly that life was as simple as, you get pregnant and then hopefully you have children. I hadn’t considered that you would need a termination if you were pregnant, 30 and you were married.”
O’Connell and her husband chose to continue with the pregnancy, having considered all of their options including travelling abroad for a termination.
“It opened up something to me and showed me my degree of ignorance. I never considered the wanted child that was being terminated”. This is the only time in the interview Kate O’Connell speaks slowly.
Her son Pierce was born with a severe medical birth defect which meant “his guts were outside of his body and he was very sick. But he is now a healthy seven year-old with no belly button and severe scarring on his abdomen”.
O’Connell’s own experience she says, opened her mind to other experiences of pregnancy and the importance of choice for a woman and for her doctor.
Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil will be given a vote of free conscience on the Eighth Amendment referendum, a decision which appears to promote a liberal agenda on the part of Leo Varadkar and Michéal Martin but is, O’Connell argues, a weak decision.
“This is not about personal morality or a personal decision. I think the least people who are elected to high office can do is to educate themselves on the work of the Citizens’ Assembly and the Eighth Amendment committee. Members of the Oireachtas said they would be reading the report over the Christmas period, well I can tell you that report is the shortest report I have ever seen. It is 20 pages, so they should have it read by now”.
O’Connell is emphatic on the need for politicians to “educate” themselves on the realities of abortion in this country. There has been no political commitment from the Taoiseach or leader of the minority government part, Micheál Martin, to follow the recommendations of the Eighth Amendment committee, which advised a repeal of the Eighth Amendment and the legalisation of abortion for up to 12 weeks gestation.
“I find it hard after we have gone through a deliberative democratic process, that anybody could think they could change that and that would be okay,” O’Connell says.
“There are up to a thousand women taking abortion pills every year in this country. It’s just not right to my mind that someone should be taking these alone, without any sort of assistance. What if you have an underlying medical condition and you’re taking these alone with no guidance? You could bleed to death. It’s bizarre in this day and age”.
Abortion in the case of rape and incest is a position that some, including Micheál Martin, have chosen to support. The realities of legislating for this are unconscionable. “It is absolutely impossible to legislate for abortion in cases of rape and incest, without a complete breach of a woman’s human’s right. You can’t drag a woman who has been raped to be examined. And often rape can’t be proven,” says O’Connell.
“Anyone that says I am okay with abortion in cases of rape and incest, well it is not abortion they have the concern with it is the sexual act”.
O’Connell’s views on the Eighth Amendment seem to mark her as a progressive politician, and yet that label doesn’t seem to fit as she has been lambasted online for her work on the health committee where she voted down the legalisation of cannabis as a medicinal product.
“My views on this are very liberal, I am very much pro-decriminalisation of all drugs,” she says. “I think take the money out of the drug trade and then you deal with the drug trade. Look at what is going on we see it every week, bloodbaths over drug crime, it’s been going on for years”.
“The problem with the medicinal cannabis bill brought forward by Gino Kenny is that it would completely undermine the regulatory process we have in this country,” says O’ Connell. “The regulatory process is the way people can know a drug is safe to use and when you put cannabis through a process of saying ‘yes, this is safe to use’ it just does not qualify,” she adds.
“I know people have been taking cannabis since the dawn of time and I have no problem with that, personally I would be in favour of legalising cannabis…I don’t know why Gino Kenny’s bill didn’t just try that, it would have been much handier,” said O’Connell.
Does she think the legalisation of cannabis is inevitable? “A few years ago, no one was interested in supporting a repeal of the 8th, so nothing is impossible”.
Does she think it will happen in her political lifetime? ” Well, I’ve got a lot on my plate this week, but we’ll see.”
O’Connell has been targeted online for her work on the 8th committee and for her work on the health committee when the medicinal cannabis bill came before it. But she says she has recently gotten a “stratospheric” level of harassment online, since news broke over Christmas that she was to publish a new bill to enact legislation that would clamp down on unlicensed practitioners of alternative medicine who make claims about their services that are not medically or scientifically proven.
There is currently no law to deter or punish those who make false claims to have healing herbs or anti-cancer tonics. “Part of the sales mechanism for these people is the secret attached to it,” said O’Connell “these people say- don’t tell your doctor, they won’t understand this kind of medicine”.
O’Connell says that the level of abuse she is receiving is indicative of the extent and seriousness of the problem. “I find that most things in life come down to money and people in Ireland are making a lot of money out of these bogus treatments and they are very annoyed at me”.
O’Connell is unrepentant. “I find if a lot of people are really annoyed with you you’re probably doing the right job”.
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