Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Equality, inclusion and diversity are three things that should be central to any and every republican who wishes to build and live in a real republic.

Together, we took a leap of love in the marriage referendum in May 2015. We kept faith with our brothers and sisters, our aunties and uncles, our friends and neighbours, our political comrades and our political rivals. As we descended on the polling stations and as all the home-to-vote aeroplanes landed - I know they meant so much to our LGBTQI+ community - they were all itching to tick the "Tá" box on the voting paper. We had the sense that we were making history. That "Yes" transformed the pain and exclusion that had been felt by the community - a pain and exclusion that saw too many leaving this island so they could be who they were, look how they wanted to look and love who they wanted to love.

Like many, I smile when I look back on those sunny days and when the memories pop up on Facebook. We did it. We did it together and we did it for each other. However, it would be foolish to think that homophobia has vanished and we would be careless, especially in this House, as legislators, to think we can take our eye off the ball. That same othering, that sniggering, that suspicion and questioning is raising its ugly head right now when it comes to our trans community.

Have we not learned enough from the way we scapegoated people, the way we, as a society, barged into the lives of men, women and children, locking them up in laundries or lunatic asylums, as they were called at the time, mother and baby institutions and industrial schools? We just could not leave people alone. We had to be at them all the time. I saw on social the media the other day someone say that their father could not remember the word for transitioning, so he used the word "transforming". It is a pretty good word to describe Ireland's own journey, where we looked at the loathing we had for others, and the scapegoating and the finger-pointing, and decided quietly that it is not us anymore and will not be us, because all of us are us.

Today, as a Kildare Sinn Féin Deputy, I am especially proud to speak of the trail blazed by a Kildare woman to whom so much is owed, Dr. Lydia Foy. Dr. Foy changed her gender and had to do it publicly, entering a very long and very public battle for recognition. Without wishing to intrude on her life, I would imagine it was a very difficult and lonely journey, as it is for so many people who have followed in her footsteps. As a person who prefers to live and let live, I used to think that whatever gender people identified as was really nobody's business except their own. It is, however, everybody's business to get out of their way and it is everybody's business to allow them to be and to become the people that they are, without any talk of diminishing or denying anyone else.

I am loath to give them attention but a small cohort now goes finger-pointing again. Those in our trans community want nothing from us other than to live their lives as the people they are, the same as any of us. There has been talk which, I believe, was manufactured and imported. It was not Irish debate at all but an imported debate on the national broadcaster on trans citizens, people whose lives and whose pain and acute sensitivities were reduced to a talking point on a talk show. I am all for debate but the national broadcaster should not get involved in gossip or scaremongering, and it should stick to the facts. The fact is the word "woman" is not being removed from anything. What is being proposed is to insert inclusive language alongside the word "woman". There is no diminution or denial of anything. There is simply an inclusion of inclusion itself. Women are going nowhere; just like the T in LGBTQI+ is going nowhere either. The vast and silent majority know that rights are rights. Human rights are never up for debate. Equality, inclusion and diversity do not just happen by themselves. We make them happen and when we do, we protect them and we move on our fight to the next phase.

I listened to the Minister's statement. I welcome that he acknowledged that we need better sexual health services. We also need timelines for appropriate sex education from the Minister for Education. We need more training for public services providers so no citizen in our country feels marginalised when accessing services. People with trans friends, children, siblings and colleagues do not see or treat them as a category, classification or an item in a debate. We love, respect, protect and defend them for the people that they are, and that is citizens just like all of us.

Bród sona do gach duine. Tá súil againn go mbeidh mórshiúl agus féile iontach againn go léir ar an Satharn.

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