Liam Twomey (Fine Gael)

There is unanimity in this House that we need to bring forward legislation as quickly as possible to prohibit female genital mutilation. The only issue is that the Minister of State, in the course of her speech, did not seem to hit on the problems preventing this legislation from being passed urgently in the way we expected. She spoke of culturally sensitive issues that we must discuss before we approach this, but the dangers of female genital mutilation are nothing to do with our culture and for many of those involved it is a culture of control of the young women involved. There is a need for us, as a country, to stand up for the equality in which we believe.

Whereas we pay great attention and respect to genuine cultural differences where people are different in the way they live their lives and in what they believe, this is not a genuine cultural issue.