Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to have the good fortune to be able to speak in the Dáil about LGBTQI+ and equality today. We discuss this today from a really positive baseline, in an Ireland that has evolved and developed, moving from intolerance and exclusion to something quite different. We are moving towards real inclusion.

A gentleman I particularly want to remember today is my husband’s uncle, a man called Patrick Duggan. Patrick died earlier this year. He was an actor. He played Fr. Joe Briefly in "Father Ted", he was in the Abbey and the Gate and ultimately in London in "EastEnders" for many years. He left Ireland with his partner of over 60 years, Charles, to live in London, both for professional opportunities as an actor but also because it was not easy to be here, in 1950s Ireland, as a gay man. In London, Patrick and Charles had a better chance to live their own lives, to live as themselves and to live a life of love together until death parted them, just weeks apart, in March and April of this year. Patrick was so proud of his civil partnership and his relationship with Charles. He was also so proud to see his country adopt civil partnership and then marriage equality and, in my experience, he always looked forward with positivity rather than looking back at Ireland with any rancour. Happy Pride to Patrick and to Charles, who have left us, and happy Pride to all this weekend. Happy Pride to everyone who walks down the main streets of Dublin as themselves, with their partners, in expressions of love and happiness. I wish that each of those people, and those who may choose to stay home because they are not yet ready to join but who might come in the future, could enjoy that experience of natural, comfortable freedom each of the other 364 days of the year in our capital and in the rest of Ireland in the same way that I can, without thinking about it at all.

It is so important that the Pride parade is going through the main streets of Dublin this year and that we can walk those streets as LGBTQI+ people, and as allies, fully accepted. There is something really symbolic about the march going through the town, down our main streets, with people holding their partner's hands, kissing their partner and being totally themselves for one day, while recognising that many people in Ireland cannot be themselves on so many other days because of how they present, how they feel they present or how they feel others might feel they present. I recognise that there are many people in Ireland today who may feel uncomfortable most days. They feel that they might have to reduce who they are or how they present. They feel that they do not fit the norm and they are apprehensive, for one reason or another, about coming out and doing basic things. They steel themselves before going out for a day's shopping, leaving the house, getting a bus and doing other normal things because of how society views them or how they feel society views them. They find themselves having to police, catch or arrest their natural manner. For those who do not fit the norm, life can be a daily struggle. I want to name that experience in the Dáil today and I want to understand it. I know the people whom I represent want to understand it and to say clearly that they wish that were not the case. We want those who may feel they do not fit, who are not out today, in our world as they are. Together, we will be better for it. The Dublin of the 1950s missed out on Patrick Duggan, and others like him, who left for something more than professional reasons and I hope we are not making that same mistake with other people today.

The Minister rightly noted in his opening speech how deeply troubling it is that in the past five years alone, we have seen LGBTQI+ rights go backwards across the world and there are also considerable challenges in Ireland today. As many Deputies have noted, there have been many reports of verbal and violent hate crimes on the LGBTQI+ community. Earlier this year, the community and the whole country were rocked by the murders of two men in Sligo, Michael Snee and Aidan Moffitt, a Fine Gael stalwart whose loss is still felt deeply within the Fine Gael community. I know that Michael Snee's loss is also felt deeply within his community and by all of those who loved and knew both men.

I have been able to engage through the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice on the development of hate crime legislation and I look forward to it being published shortly. The Tánaiste confirmed earlier today that the third national strategy on domestic, sexual and gender-based violence is due to be published in the coming few weeks, a body of work that will be gender neutral and deeply relevant to the LGBTQI+ community.

There is a really deep need for a modernised relationship and sexual education, RSE, programme driven by the Department of Education that is inclusive of the LGBTQI+ community. I am deeply aware that there are young children in Ireland today, at different stages of their own personal and sexual awareness, who do not see themselves recognised in the programme of civic education that is supposed to help them to learn more about the world. Not only that, but as Deputy Higgins pointed out, until last year there was actively homophobic content on the curriculum programme. The Department of Education must take urgent steps to make sure there is nothing comparable there now and that there is a properly inclusive RSE programme that allows all children in Ireland to see themselves and their family forms being reflected in the curriculum. That is a matter of complete urgency and a question of deep respect for the LGBTQI+ community.

We also need to see tangible and quick progress on the banning of conversion therapy. The last time I spoke on this in the Dáil, our closest EU neighbour, France, just days before had banned conversion therapy. It is a commitment without our own programme for Government and I look forward to speedy action following the publication of research which is due in quarter three of this year.

There is no appropriate healthcare provision for transgender people in this country. I raised this in the Dáil in March in relation to Tavistock and youth trans healthcare. In the coming weeks, I am due to meet with a clinician who provides specialist trans healthcare to discuss their views and their experience. I will feed this back to the Minister for Health and will include the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman, in any correspondence.

I am deeply aware that over the last two or three weeks, there were discussions on radio which, whether intended or not, had a deeply damaging and difficult effect on trans people in particular. Of course, I am referring to the debate that was facilitated on RTÉ's "Live Line". I really do have concerns about homophobia in Ireland. We do not need it. It is not where we have come from. We do not need homophobic attacks or homophobic language. Crucially, and what was so concerning about that debate, is that we do not need to fall into the trap of division when we have journeyed positively and together for so long. The marriage equality referendum was one of the greatest moments of this country’s history, when people looked again at their families, their assumptions, their children, their brothers and sisters and chose to include, celebrate, listen, learn and to open their hearts and their minds. Of course, that we needed a referendum at all was slightly problematic. How I should ever have been given the right to decide whom someone else marries, no more than it is someone else’s business what my reproductive life might be, was always a challenge for me. Obviously, there was a constitutional imperative to hold a referendum and so we did. We did it marvellously and we celebrated marvellously too. We were different and special and we were an example to the world and I genuinely believe we can stay that way. We do not have to go down the road of the politics of division. In the referendum, we found ways through. We found ways to ask and answer questions, openly and without embarrassment or fear of causing offence. There is something different about Ireland and our inclusion. It is different to what has been going on for the past two years in the UK, although I am starting to see some of the divisive talking points coming out in the Irish discourse. We do not need to do that. There is something different about us, about how we mind each other, something different in how we respect questions and answers. We can find ways to provide answers and comfort to people who have never encountered the question of what it is to feel uncomfortable in gender, to feel different, to want to transition. We can find ways to answer questions about the practicalities of transition.

People may have natural questions about providing mental health support and recognising problems that are causing unspeakable pain, particularly to a very small number of the younger generation who need to talk and need support. We are more accommodating and inclusive than the division that goes on elsewhere. We are not the UK in the midst of Brexit. We are not a Trumpian United States. We are different.

I do not buy into a "them versus us" narrative on anything. It feeds polarisation. We need to find ways to have an important conversation in ways that are more accommodating. The Gender Recognition Bill was enacted and commenced in 2015 and we have not had major issues since then, so from where is this division coming? I could see it clearly two years ago coming from the UK. I referenced in the House in February or March that I hoped we would not go down that road. The National Women's Council of Ireland has been alive to this. It has been actively working with the Transgender Equality Network Ireland, TENI, LGBT Ireland and others to identify this issue and get ahead of it.

Although there are so many people with natural questions, there is also something else going on with this debate. I have been in the UK and been approached by members of that debate there who sought for me to try to advance their position here. I am happy to speak and listen to anybody but not in a way that involves going down the road of excluding people. Ireland dealt with the same-sex marriage referendum question in a way that allowed people to learn and grow together. That is what the LGBTQI community needs at the moment - to be able to engage, for others to engage respectfully, and to answer the questions people may have. Trans rights, women’s rights and men’s rights are not competing rights. That view is shared by the many people who have contacted me in recent weeks. It does not impact my pre-existing rights to acknowledge that other people have rights too and need to have them articulated and protected.

It is coming up to two years since I took up the role of Fine Gael spokesperson on equality and, on this particular topic, it has been an enlightening two years, although I was deeply engaged already. I have had the pleasure of meeting and speaking to truly amazing and brave people who have come from difficult backgrounds in which, often, they are not accepted and gone through the personal turmoil of coming to terms with their own identity or sexuality. I think in particular of the young people during Covid who had not come out and could not get out. They were stuck at home in situations where they were not respected, did not feel included or could not come out and talk to their family. BeLonG To in particular played an enormously supportive and important role during that period. It provided people with the opportunity to connect with mental health professionals offering counselling, mentorship and support. It was a particularly difficult period for young teenagers who had not come out to their families or who were in difficulties. I mention that because there are long-term effects for those people in terms of how they feel society may view them.

I have had the pleasure of engaging with advocacy groups such as LGBT Ireland, TENI and BeLonG To and I thank them for their ongoing engagement with me. I also thank the National Women’s Council of Ireland, which has been such a powerful ally also on these issues and has explained in recent weeks that being a woman and accommodating trans rights are not competing ideas. We get to choose our discourse. We can choose how we progress. We are in a really positive and powerful position. We can maintain that, and I hope we do. Achieving full equality is an ongoing and everyday matter of education, acceptance and understanding. I look forward to continuing to play my part as an ally and a legislator in this regard. Happy Pride.

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