Politicians keeping promises should not be so rare an event as to provoke praise. Nonetheless, it is admirable that Fine Gael TDs Emer Currie and Barry Ward have delivered on their promise to Saoirse Aylward to draft Jax’s Law by the end of March.

The draft Bill supported by 32 cross-party Oireachtas members categorises the loss of a pregnancy due to careless or dangerous driving as a serious offence that must be dealt with in the Circuit Court.

The Bill is named for baby Jax, who died in Saoirse Aylward’s womb after a road traffic collision. To Aylward’s horror, under current law, her 4lb baby boy, who had to undergo an invasive postmortem to establish the cause of death and who has a stillbirth certificate and a grave, could not be considered a victim of crime.

Drafting a Bill is only the first step. Getting it enacted will be challenging. Things are not as bad as when Alan Shatter discovered in 2008 that out of 87 proposed Private Members’ Bills in the previous four years, only one had been enacted – Pat Rabbitte’s Bill allowing coroners to subpoena witnesses. Nonetheless, the reality remains that Private Members’ Bills, even sponsored by backbenchers, are often left to languish in second stage hell. The best hope is that it influences subsequent government legislation.

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