Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I also congratulate the Government on the passage of the children's rights referendum and acknowledge Senator van Turnhout's particular role. I also congratulate and wish well those on the different sides who brought the benefit of their life experience and expertise to sincere contributions on the debate. Unfortunately, I cannot congratulate the Government on the manner in which it treated taxpayers' money. The Government must have been in some kind of cocoon of unreality in which it deluded itself into thinking it could spend taxpayers' money in whatever way it wished.

I also was struck by the comments made this morning by the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Gilmore, on his hopes for a referendum on redefining marriage in effect because there also appears to be an air of unreality about that. One must be clear about a couple of points. The Tánaiste claims that gay marriage is a human right and while that might be what he thinks, it is not what the Universal Declaration on Human Rights says about marriage. It is not what the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights says about marriage and it is not what the European Convention on Human Rights states about marriage because each of the aforementioned human rights documents understands marriage to be the union of a man and a woman. Moreover, each of these documents is many times more important than is Deputy Eamon Gilmore's declaration on human rights.

That said, I am not afraid of a debate. Bring it on and let us have a full and open debate about this. One could call it the second children's rights referendum because central to that debate will be the right of a child to be brought up by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage and that the State shall not do anything to lessen the preference for that situation in the laws that apply. I make this point with full regard of course to people's rights to protections of various kinds that already have been passed in the law, in however flawed a way notwithstanding.