Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I have some questions. Mr. Moran paints a very good picture because we are not dealing with today but with an historic matter. For those born after decriminalisation, this might be very hard to understand. Much and all as I dearly wish I was in that category, as others here are, I am not, so I do have some understanding of the issue. It is hard to believe that decriminalisation only happened in 1995. As Mr. Moran describes, a conversation took place and no identifications were divulged but it was implicitly understood. To try to understand that through the lens of today is very hard, but it is very easy to understand that you were not permitted by the law or society to be fully who you were. You could never have a full conversation about whether you or any future relationship would benefit from the scheme. Therefore, we could say that it is reasonable that you would have opted out. I also know people who opted out because they could just not envisage a situation like this at the time. Twenty-year-olds think they will always be 20 and that they will never do anything really boring like get married, or anything like that. Many people opted out of the scheme but at the early stages, they would have a chance to come back, which was not necessarily open to Mr. Moran.

Mr. Moran talked about the intent of the legislation, which is the thing we need to home in on. The legislation is intended to make right that which was wrong, to allow people into and to benefit fully from a scheme. He also said he is not looking for a handout or for a freebie. These are contributions that were naturally made.

In terms of fixing this, as Mr. Moran put it, based on the correspondence from the Department and the comprehensive interactions he has had - fair play to him for not letting the issue go - there is no statutory instrument or anything like that. Is that correct? This is the application of the letter of the law and a change to only the letter of the law would suffice. Am I right?