Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I was really uplifted by the Minister's remarks and his contribution to the debate. As has been said, debates in this House can often be quite negative and a lot of points can be scored, but the Minister's contribution has challenged us all to point to positives. We can point to a lot of negatives. We have to do that and to point to challenges.

Only two weeks ago, however, I brought my four-year-old daughter into the Dublin Pride shop and we decked her out. We got her a flag and a t-shirt for the Pride march on Saturday. I was reflecting on the fact that that just would have been absolutely impossible when I was her age. Like Deputy Funchion, I do not consider myself to be that old, but when we engage with our children we realise how old we are. When I was her age, only a few years later Declan Flynn would be murdered in Fairview Park. That was 40 years ago, when a homosexual act, as it was then called, was a criminal offence. We decriminalised homosexuality only in 1993. We had a dedication on Sunday to Mervyn Taylor, who was a bastion of equality rights, including LGBT+ rights, in these Houses.

I think of my daughter and think of young people, as has been described. I often observe young people as they walk together in a very different Ireland from that of the kind of teenage walking I used to do. The background of one or two of their party may be of a different country. They celebrate that and are engaged in that much more than in the very dull, pasty-white Ireland in which I grew up. One or two of their number may be from the LGBT+ community. That is what they know to be right, normal and celebrated. They are ready to defend those rights, and that is something I find so refreshing of that generation, which has handed this to us and are handing it to my child. Whatever happens to my child, whoever she may be and whomever she may love will be defended by those young people, more so, perhaps, than by people of my generation, who grew up in the schoolroom of homophobic jokes and in a system and an Ireland that were quite oppressive.

Then we see across Europe, as the Minister said, in Russia, Hungary and Poland, and in various individual states of the United States, what they are trying to do to books, statements and legislation. We see troubling conversations happening in the UK and then we see them in this country. We all have to take note of the fact that, as the Minister said, a person's existence is not up for debate and that punching down on a community that suffers higher levels of mental ill health and suicide just is not good enough. This month we have an opportunity to call that out. Being a member of the LGBT community is different from facing other inequalities. If you are a member of the Travelling community, you share that burden with your family. You can go home to the bosom of your family to discuss or share the inequality or discrimination you have suffered and you can plough through life together. If you are a member of another minority group, perhaps a migrant group, you may be able to share that burden sometimes with your family. If, however, you are a member of the LGBT community, that is sometimes a very private discomfort or a very private hell, and possibly the worst thing you can do in your own mind is to be honest about who you are to your own family. Imagine the fear of rejection from your own family. That is a fear I cannot even contemplate, that you would be who you are to your family and be rejected by your own family. Sometimes we have to reflect on how big a fear that is today for young Irish people, but it is young Irish people who are dispelling and challenging that and fighting back against it.

The Minister referred to the hate crime legislation which is coming down the tracks. I greatly appreciate that because we have been campaigning for that for quite a long time. When we see what happened in Sligo, there is a marked difference, as the Minister will know, between hate-based or hate-motivated crime and other crimes. My colleague, Deputy Nash, asked me to impress on the Minister the need for a commitment from the Department of Justice as to when it will start public consultation on the dispensing of convictions of men who were prosecuted pre-1993. That was the second element of the 2017 Labour Party legislation which led to the State apology marking the 25th anniversary of decriminalisation.

I will say this much about the educational system, and I know people across these Houses will agree with me. Education is one of our biggest challenges, as is the elephant in the room of the dominance of the influence of entities that are hostile to this agenda. We cannot pretend that that does not exist or that our education system is not still dominated by the influence of patron bodies that are hostile to this agenda. Within the school system there absolutely are schools that stand on their own two feet, that will promote Pride Month, that will speak about LGBT rights and that want to stamp out homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying. We will have to come, however, to a pinch point in the advancement of our Republic and of our democracy in that it is not sustainable for us to have 90% of the primary schools of this country under the patronage of bodies that are hostile to the agenda with which we in this House all agree. How can we have a scenario in which all the parties represented in this Dáil, the representatives of which are directly elected by the people, are, I believe, in concert with this agenda, with the people of the country themselves amending the Constitution in 2015 in order to afford equal rights, including equal marriage rights and equal constitutional protection, to families, yet so many of our schools and so many of our minds can still be influenced by patron bodies that are hostile to this agenda?

It is not just about Pride month but it is about every day of the life of a young LGBTQI+ person and if they are attending such a school, we are going to have to deal with that scenario.

I was involved in the amendment of section 37 of the Employment Equality Act, that the employment rights of an employee in a State-funded institution had to be protected, even if they were perceived to be undermining the ethos of the school or the health institution in which that person was employed. We could not delete that section of the Employment Equality Act because the patron bodies, constitutionally, still had the right to uphold their ethos. The very existence or the way of living their lives of those who were LGBTQI+, who were unmarried parents, or were divorced, was being undermined because of the fact they were teachers.

We had a situation only a number of years ago where the INTO LGBT+ teachers' group was asked to stand in a photograph in Áras an Uachtaráin with President Michael D. Higgins. Half of the teachers left the photograph because they did not want to be photographed and to be clearly identifiable as LGBTQI+ because they could not be fully convinced or sure that their employment prospects would not be inhibited by the fact they were in a photograph with the President of this country advocating for the rights of LGBTQI+ teachers. That is a climate of fear. While we amended the section of the Employment Equality Act, we have to go much further.

Let me not finish, however, on a note of negativity but on one of love. I was greatly taken by the contribution of Deputy Martin Kenny when he spoke of our collective humanity. What really connects us as human beings is this search and need for love. Some people find it and some do not. If one finds it and is able to express it, it is the most wondrous thing. Pride is all about love. As I said earlier, I cannot wait to bring my little four-year-old to the Pride march on Saturday and for it to be the most normal thing in the world. I cannot wait for me to explain to her what it is all about.

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