Katherine Zappone (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I commence my contribution with the words of a gentleman in his late 20s, reflecting on his youth. These words appear on a research study commissioned by the Health Service Executive in 2009, entitled, Supporting LBGT- lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender lives. It reads:

It was not the being gay that made me feel suicidal, it was all the bullying, the name calling, the negative ideas about being gay that I was full of from growing up in a homophobic society and the fact that I never heard one person say, in all my childhood and adolescence, that being gay was okay or even good.

These negative ideas about being gay was also my experience, several years ago, in the US, although I did not experience any over-bullying. I often felt shame. I felt shame for my feelings, shame for my actions, shame for who I was discovering myself to be. What I know now is that shame is never generated from within, it develops as others who are not like you, suspect that one difference is deviant and, therefore, treat one as inferior. It also develops when one comes in contact with laws and systems fashioned by State or religious leaders who keep one outside the mainstream of human worth or worthiness.

Sometimes such a sense of shame can lead to attempts to end one's life brought on by the conditions or the culture or ethos within which one grows up or as a result of bullying and name calling in the context of a homophobic society. Such a society is still alive and well in 2012 in 21st century Ireland. The previous President, Mary McAleese, in one of her final speeches in office, spoke about the need to dismantle the noxious apparatus of homophobia.

One of the prime questions we are here to address is why people commit suicide. My comments will focus on one specific dimension, namely, the link between people with minority sexual and gender identities and suicide. I am grateful to Senators Noone and Power who have already raised this issue. Senator Power referred to a couple of statistics. LGBT youth, in particular, are at an elevated risk of suicide. Some 50% of these young people under 25 years of age have seriously considered ending their lives and 20% have attempted to, at least once.

Research suggests that negative reactions to or portrayals of these young people's lives impact on their ability to form a positive self identity. Different sexual and gender identities are perceived as deviant, not normal and, therefore, not good. Senator Power referred to the BeLonGTo youth service which is at the forefront of work in this arena, especially with young people. It was recognised as best practice at the recent United Nations conference in Brazil on homophobic bullying in education. I congratulate it on that. The national strategy for action on suicide prevention also identifies LGBT people as a marginalised group who experience discrimination as vulnerable to self harming behaviour.

Last year, the Minister for Education and Skills launched guidelines for principals on including LGBT students in school policies, as developed by the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network, GLEN, and BeLonGTo. Therefore, we have the guidelines to prevent homophobic bullying but will they be implemented? Within these questions is the issue of ethos within educational settings. I believe the ethos issue is critical for a number of reasons but in this instance the issue of ethos is crucial for suicide prevention. As we are all aware there is a dominance of the Catholic Church in our education system. Its approach, especially at primary level, is to integrate its ethos within the context of the whole curriculum as well as the overall school nearby. There is a need to raise some critical questions as we look at the link between minority sexual and gender identity and suicide.

Members may be aware that Catholic doctrine, thus the Catholic ethos, is that homosexual practices are deviant, not normal, not good. While Catholicism teaches that the homosexual person is good, homosexual practices are effectively evil. In outlining this belief, the Pope is on record, in a document entitled Unions Between Homosexual Persons, as writing that those who move from tolerance to the legitimisation of specific rights for cohabiting homosexual persons need to be reminded that the legislation of evil is far different than the toleration of evil. Those are his words, outlining explicitly the Roman Catholic doctrine that intimate love expressed between homosexual people is evil. It is rational to conclude that there is a blatant contradiction between efforts to implement guidelines to prevent bullying of LGBT young people in schools with a Roman Catholic ethos.

What can we do about this? That is a question we need to raise in our debate on suicide prevention. In June 2011, the Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, said he proposed considering establishing a working group, comprising all relevant sections of his Department, NGOs in the arena, education partners to help draft a roadmap towards the elimination of homophobic bullying in schools.

My office has been checking to ascertain if that group has been established. It appears as if nothing has happened. I recommend that the Minister of State bring to the attention of the Minister, Deputy Quinn, the urgent need to establish the working group. As part of its terms of reference it should consider square on, the relationship between homophobic bullying and religious ethos. In light of the evidence this could be a critical step towards moving towards the prevention of suicide for LGBT persons. LGBT people are beautiful young people.