Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)

What I would say to them is that love is love and they live in a Republic where equality must be at the core of all that we do. Homophobic attacks and violence are crimes and there needs to be zero tolerance of them. The Minister for education reminds me that this week is Stand Up Awareness Week, an important initiative by Belong To in our schools. I thank it for the work it is doing. Perhaps this is something we could discuss on a cross-party basis. I would certainly be very happy, on behalf of my party, to arrange for party leaders or representatives to sit down. If the Deputy would like to put that in train, perhaps all representatives of political parties could sit down and discuss this. We have made good progress in this country but I sometimes think that when we have a referendum, people think that is it done. I am very proud of the progress we have made on things like marriage equality but we clearly have more work to do. The idea that anybody would feel unsafe expressing their love in public or on our streets is not acceptable.

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