The Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Katherine Zappone, has confirmed that the definition of ‘child’ used by her department does “not extend to the unborn”. She made the statement in response to a parliamentary question from Tipperary South TD, Mattie McGrath, who commented that the exclusion of all unborn children regardless of gestational age from the definition of ‘child’ borders on the incredible.  “I think most people will be absolutely stunned and appalled to hear the Minister for Children apply such a discriminatory and disingenuous meaning to the definition of the word ‘child’. . . . Is Minister Zappone seriously suggesting that a full term child minutes or seconds away from birth is not a child or a human person?,” he said.

The Minister claimed this exclusion is consistent with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), but Deputy McGrath pointed out that the Preamble to the UNCRC states that “the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth”. This means, “that a child is to be considered a ‘child’ before birth and that a pre-natal child is entitled to legal protection,” he said. “I would appeal to Minister Zappone to reconsider her Departments failure to accept a basic human truth; that a real human ‘child’ is in existence long before birth, and that this is confirmed by the very Convention that she says refutes this,” concluded Deputy McGrath.