Marcella Corcoran Kennedy (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)

I welcome the legislation and congratulate the Minister on bringing it forward as a priority. Female genital mutilation or female genital cutting is carried out for non-medical reasons on children and women worldwide from infancy onwards. Amnesty International estimates that 2 million girls across the world undergo this procedure annually with 135 million women worldwide having had some form of genital cutting carried out on them. The lack of consent of the girls, children and even babies, the concerns about the safety of the procedure and its long-term consequences is of great concern to many countries. The World Health Organisation has made 6 February International Day of Zero Tolerance to FGM in an attempt to end the practice.

The many reasons given for its use are cultural, religious and social factors within families and communities. Even if mothers or grandmothers oppose the practice they are under pressure from their local community, religion and some medical practitioners to conform as they could become social outcasts otherwise. It is critical that we in this country oppose FGM, a brutal act from the perspective of both health and human rights. The negative physical and mental outcomes have been well documented and referred to already in the debate so I will not go into the deeply upsetting effects again. It is a violence against women and children, it is a form of torture and it violates bodily integrity.

I welcome the Bill in its aims to provide protection for girls and women by making it an offence to remove a girl or woman from the State to carry out FGM. Making FGM a distinct offence and enabling prosecution for carrying out or enabling FGM in other jurisdictions is a welcome facet of the Bill.

We must protect women at risk of FGM. AkiDwA has suggested that more than 2, 500 people in this country have already undergone FGM. One is one too many. It is deplorable to think that this act could have taken place on Irish citizens. I commend the advocates to date who have pursued the introduction of the law which will protect vulnerable women and children from this brutal crime which highlights inequality between the sexes and discriminates against women. I commend the Minister and his staff on the introduction of the Bill, which I sincerely welcome.

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