Rónán Mullen (Independent)

I welcome the Minister to the House. We are seeing a lot of him lately. It always feels a little more like home for me when this Minister appears in the House. I also welcome Senator Quinn's, as always, thoughtful comments on the common travel area and the debate we need to have on whether we would be better off with our existing arrangements or the Schengen Agreement. Generally I welcome this Bill. The giving of legislative underpinning to our passport system is overdue. It seeks to reflect the constitutional basis of the provision of passports and is very important.

I welcome the efforts in the Bill to combat fraud in various ways and the series of offences and penalties related to the fraudulent application for passports and the misuse of passports. In particular the section 20 provision on the use of false passports for the purpose of misrepresenting one's age to gain access to public houses and the purchase of alcohol is a useful step as part of a panoply of steps needed to tackle Ireland's ever more serious drink problem. There may be enforcement issues. I wonder if that provision is purely declaratory. I wonder if the bouncers who might give evidence in related cases need to be registered. These are general points that may require further consideration. Overall I welcome that provision.

While I reserve the right to find other concerns between now and Committee Stage, my main concern so far is the proposal to issue passports in cases of gender reassignment. I do not want my comments on this very sensitive issue to be misunderstood. My concern is primarily that the Government appears to be jumping the gun by seeking to make legislative provision in this area. In February the High Court gave the Government two months to outline how it proposes to rectify breaches of human rights. This followed the Foy case in which Mr. Justice Liam McKechnie found in favour of the plaintiff that certain provisions of the birth registration laws, specifically the Civil Registration Act 2004 violated the right of the plaintiff to respect for her private life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights because those provisions of Irish law did not provide for "meaningful recognition" of the plaintiff's new female identity. The Government still has two months from 14 February in which to say what it will do. The Government has yet to say whether it intends to appeal that decision. Through this Bill one Department is cutting across the right of another Department to decide whether it wants to appeal. It appears to be jumping the gun by incorporating the thrust of the High Court's decision in seeking to legislate in this way. The Government's time in which to say whether it will appeal the High Court's decision does not appear to be respected by the incorporation of the decision in the Bill.

In an unwarranted way this Bill proposes to deal with a very sensitive issue in a piecemeal manner. Gender reassignment and the question of whether this should be recognised in various ways in various kinds of identity documents — birth registration, driving licences and passports — is a complex issue which the Oireachtas should consider in separate legislation rather than deal with in a piecemeal manner by a particular provision being made. The Government is taking the High Court judgment as the position and cutting across the Oireachtas's right to consider the matter in full. The Oireachtas needs an opportunity to think through this very complex area of gender reassignment. Let us remember that in the High Court Mr. Justice McKechnie noted we are dealing with gender dysphoria, a syndrome where a person's gender identity is at odds with his or her physical sexual indicators.

One might try to deal with this in various ways. One might say "yes" to complete recognition of the new identity in various documents. One might say "no", because there are certain objective facts; in the case of a man who has become a woman through gender reassignment, that person still has Y chromosomes. We might argue the compassionate approach is to have a kind of via media where newly issued birth certificates and passports would reflect the original identity but would perhaps, to use a phrase that is used elsewhere in this Bill, contain an observation which would reflect the new situation. Further thought is needed on this. The Oireachtas should not be prevented from considering this sensitive issue in a more holistic way than this Bill provides by purporting to legislate for one specific area, namely, the issuing of passports. On Committee Stage I will propose that section be deleted pending a wider consideration in separate legislation by the Oireachtas.

I apologise to the Acting Chairman for stretching my welcome.