Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I wish to share time with Deputies McManus, Quinn and Michael D. Higgins.

I am proud, as a member of the Labour Party, to speak in support of the Bill on civil unions and join in congratulating my colleague, Deputy Howlin, for his work on it and for its introduction. This is an issue of human rights and equality. It is about freedom for gay and lesbian people to enjoy the same rights, as couples, enjoyed by heterosexuals. I am certain that some day the Dáil will legislate to give full legal status to same-sex unions, but why cannot it be today? Why are we waiting? Why does the Government insist on deferring this important legislation for six months?

I was saddened by the contribution last night of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and leader of the Progressive Democrats, Deputy McDowell. I was saddened because he proposed one of the most dishonest amendments I have ever seen in the House which pretended to be sympathetic to gay and lesbian people but which in reality was scuppering the legislation because the six month delay he proposes will cause the Bill to fall with the dissolution of the Dáil.

I was also saddened that the Minister, Deputy McDowell, in his contribution last night volunteered his party for further redundancy which he has so often wished to avoid. I remember in 1993 when the Progressive Democrats from the Opposition benches supported the then Minister, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, when she introduced legislation to decriminalise homosexuality while she was being stabbed in the back in her own back yard by some of her party colleagues.

Last night the Minister, Deputy McDowell, declared:

From the dark days of prejudice, a new tolerance has emerged, based on our appreciation of the fact that homosexual people are in every respect entitled to be equally valued as members of society and not to be relegated to an inferior status. That is what republicanism is all about.

In these two eloquent sentences the Minister makes the case for the Labour Party Bill but what will he and his party do about it in this Chamber in under an hour's time? What is the republicanism of which he speaks? Will they stand by the Republic and vote for this Bill or will they stand behind their Government partners, for some of whom at least republicanism is now merely a subtitle, and sink the hopes of many same-sex couples throughout the country?

I ask in particular my colleague, Deputy Fiona O'Malley, with whom I share a constituency, where she will stand. Will she stand with the people of Dún Laoghaire who sent her, Deputy Andrews and me here, who share our liberal outlook and who value the concepts of personal freedoms that we came here to represent? Will she support this Bill proposed by the Labour Party or will she support the pathetic amendment to its Second Stage, the politics of which are given away in one clause of it which states "Mindful of the desirability of legislating in this area in such a manner as to attract the greatest degree of social consensus"?

There was all the guff in the Minister, Deputy McDowell's speech yesterday about the Constitution, and I thank Deputy Andrews for recording that it was guff and that there is no constitutional impediment to this Bill. All the talk from the Minister, Deputy McDowell, yesterday about the desirability of legislating for civil unions may be Progressive Democrats window-dressing but the so-called desirability of social consensus is pure undiluted Fianna Fáil. What it means is that we are approaching a general election, this is a tricky social issue and Fianna Fáil wants to be able to face both ways at the same time. It wants to be able to tell those who support civil unions that they did not really oppose this Bill and vote against it — they only postponed it for six months. At the same time, they want to be able to tell those who opposed legislating for civil unions that they did not support the Labour Party Bill.

I have come to expect nothing more than that from Fianna Fáil and I feel sorry for my constituency colleague, Deputy Andrews, who is nobbled to support that position. However, this is a defining moment for the Progressive Democrats because they are a separate party and they can tell their partners in Government that they are not having it in the same way as they told them on a number of economic issues during the past ten years that they were not having it. If they stand for the liberal values they have professed here so often, if they stand for the concept of personal freedom, which I thought I shared with them, and if they stand, as they have said here previously, by the Republic, they will come into this House and vote with the Labour Party on this Bill tonight.

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