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RTE has been blasted for editing medicinal cannabis campaigner Vera Twomey's speech criticising the Government at last night's People Of The Year awards.

Vera and her daughter Ava Barry, eight, rose to national prominence during a two-and-a-half-year national campaign to secure medicinal cannabis to treat Ava’s condition, called Dravet Syndrome, which causes severe, dangerous and frequent seizures.

She was honoured among other heroes last night in a ceremony broadcast live on RTE, with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar sitting in the audience.

However, as pointed out by a reader of Broadsheet, the end part of the speech, where Mrs Twomey hits out at the Fine Gael leader's government, has been edited out in the highlight video uploaded to YouTube by RTE.

It ends at the part where she says the family had to "fight to get what Ava needed".

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It was also cut out in a tweet posted by the broadcaster last night.

Immediately afterwards, Vera had continued: "We've been let down by the Government, but we were never let down by the Irish people who supported us the whole way through this, for the last two years.

"And I would like to say, because Mr Varadkar is here, I would like to say that the outstanding issues must be resolved.

"I would like to say that the outstanding issue is legislation for medical cannabis in Ireland.

"We need legislation to access treatment properly. We want our rights - we do not want the pressure. We need our medication.

"We want the Government and opposition to work together to give the people of Ireland the gift - because it is a gift that Ava has received - and that is her freedom. Freedom to live her life, free from seizures and free from pain.

"To live and to grow and to be happy with a brighter future because everyone deserves that right now and into the future, not just seven people who have been granted licenses in Ireland to date but the thousands of other people who are watching here tonight, hoping and praying that legislation would be brought through to ease their suffering and their pain."

She added that Mr Varadkar should support People Before Profit TD's medicinal cannabis bill.

She concluded: "We want it now and you're the man to do it. And we want you to do it."

The campaigner was then given a standing ovation.

Social Democrats representative for Dublin Mid-West Anne-Marie McNally hit out at the national broadcaster over the edit.

She tweeted: "I’m more sad than angry that @rtenews cut #VeraTwomey #PeopleOfTheYear speech so as to delete bit where she called out @campaignforleo.

"Sad too that @morningireland had a 6 min package on awards and never even mentioned Vera.

"I’m sad for the erosion of public service broadcasting."

One person added on YouTube: "Where is the rest of her speech? She put her heart and soul into what she wanted to say and all of it should be available. State broadcaster censoring a proud hard working Irish woman who put everything she had into her speech. SHAME ON YE!!!!!!!!!!!!"

The full speech has since been uploaded to social media by a number of people who recorded their screens at the time of broadcast.

In a statement, RTE said: "Vera Twomey's acceptance of her award, and her full speech, can be found in a standalone segment on the RTÉ Player and the full programme from last night is also available on RTÉ Player.

"The clip referred to was uploaded to Twitter (hosted on Youtube) during the live People of the Year Awards show in order to direct viewers to the full show on TV and also to make the public aware of our catch-up facility on the RTÉ Player.

"Due to time limitations, and in order to capture a selection of moments from the full show, there were no entire speeches from award winners uploaded on this platform.

"The clips that were posted during the live show ranged from 15 seconds to over 4 minutes (Aslan's opening act)."