Michael D'Arcy (Wexford, Fine Gael)

I agree with Deputy Flanagan. I am a member of the Joint Committee on the Constitution and when we met today we wondered where we should start our work. This is a good issue with which to start. The Minister should refer the Bill to that committee immediately.

As Fine Gael spokesperson on equality, I consider this Bill a welcome opportunity to afford rights to the gay community. These are rights that all married couples enjoy without question: rights to fairer rates of tax, pensions, inheritance and to the basic status of next-of-kin. Homosexuality was rightly decriminalised by the State in 1993, but in the case of the rights of a couple in same sex partnerships, some are still being punished. It is time to end this punishment and this is the opportunity to do so. It is an opportunity for Ireland to join the 15 other states worldwide that recognise the rights of same sex couples to enjoy the tax benefits of married couples, and to remove ourselves from the unfortunate position of being among the last two major Western states that do not have some legal provision for recognising same sex relationships. I welcome this Bill because it will ease the lives of the many same sex couples in this country. It will bring these couples in from the cold, give them security and ease their worries in times of grief, illness and financial insecurity as a result of unforeseen circumstances.

Like Deputy McManus, I received a large number of e-mails from people supporting this Bill. These are Irish citizens who must be afforded the protection of legislation. They outlined their wish for this Bill to be passed. Many unfortunate circumstances were outlined to me in those e-mails, too many to relate here. I thank the Labour Party, particularly my colleague, Deputy Howlin, for introducing the Bill. It closely reflects Fine Gael's policy and gives us the opportunity to debate the issue once again. The debate was cynically postponed by the Government in the run up to the dissolution of the Dáil in May this year. Fine Gael has been seeking this opportunity since it was the first party in Dáil Éireann to publish a comprehensive civil partnership plan in 2004, following a commitment in the Visible Justice document of 2002.

We can only assume from their party manifestos that this Government will take the brave step to vote for this Bill. It would be brave in the sense that it would be fulfilling a promise, a brave move indeed for any Fianna Fáil Government. Fianna Fáil stated in its manifesto that it "will address the need to provide a legal framework that supports the rights of same sex couples, including by extending State recognition to civil partnerships between such persons so that they can live in a supportive and secure legal environment". The Green Party similarly promised:

...to remove all gender specific terms from the current legislation and regulations governing the granting of marriages to allow same-sex couples enjoy the rights and responsibilities of civil marriage and recommend the creation of a new category of 'civil partnership', an institution that could be created and dissolved with more ease than marriage. This would be available to both heterosexual and same-sex couples.

If these are indeed their policies, this is an opportunity for the Government parties to fulfil them.

I will quote a very learned man's comment on principles, which is relevant to the Green Party. The man was Groucho Marx who said, "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them ... well, I have others". When Senator Norris introduced a Bill on this subject in November 2005, the Government dismissed it and promised to introduce its own. That Bill did not materialise. When the Labour Party introduced this Bill earlier this year, the Government again postponed it. In the programme for Government, Fianna Fáil, the Green Party and the Progressive Democrats pledged that they would "legislate for civil partnerships at the earliest possible date in the lifetime of the Government". That time is now. Is the Government suggesting that we must wait years rather than months or until the last days of the Government so it can postpone the Bill again?

The Bill is not perfectly aligned to Fine Gael's policy on civil unions but it is close. We have some caveats which we would be happy to discuss on Committee Stage. We are coming to the end of the first decade of the 21st century. This not the 1970s, the 1980s or the early 1990s when homosexuality was illegal. This Bill would end discrimination against the gay community and afford its members the rights they need and deserve.

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