Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State's commitment to being proactive. We have a number of months left in this Dáil term, but that is not to say that the next Minister will not be as proactive as the current one. It is our duty to ensure that whatever legislation comes before us to be passed is as robust as possible. We had a discussion concerning 16 and 18 year olds two years ago. In 2014, the Equality Authority said that we needed to revisit that area. The authority was glad that we had moved from one of the earlier positions to where we are now. The fact that the Bill is here now is progress.

I still think we should examine this further, however. At the end of the day, it is not just about this Bill; it is about rights for young people. In this case, we have not granted them the full right to be of their preferred gender under the laws of the State. It must be onerous for somebody to be denied that gender by the State. We need more discussion on how to fully address those who are under 16. I do not have a problem with the cut-off of 16 because it is quite onerous asking them to get parental consent and jump through the hoops we have put in this Bill.

At this stage, society needs to increase the responsibilities on young people and make them suffer the consequences if they break those responsibilities. At the same time, we must recognise that they are not necessarily as mature as we would like. However, there are 25-year-olds and older people who are not as mature as we would like either. Therefore, we should not always put an old head on every 16 year old. The same might apply in this case.

Society is moving towards increasingly recognising the rights and responsibilities of young people. In many ways we are out of sync regarding the rights and responsibilities we give to 16-year-olds compared to other countries. Maybe that is something we can do between now and the two-year review the Minister of State mentioned, whereby we will address this matter once again, if there is no movement between now and Report Stage.