David Cullinane (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I, too, welcome some of the representative groups in the Gallery and thank them for the support they have given to both Government and Opposition Members of the Dáil and the Seanad on this important Bill.

I support the amendment, which is being put because a number of us believe there are serious flaws and deficiencies in this Bill.

There is no doubt whatsoever that we will have to come back and deal with those issues some time in the future. What we want is to deal with those issues at the start because there are fundamental issues of human rights, civil rights and potential constitutional issues which arise also. I would work on the basis that a large number of constructive amendments have been tabled by the Opposition that will address some of those very real concerns. Why not accept those amendments today? Let us debate them. Many of them are reasonable and necessary if we want a truly rights-based Bill. This Bill is about gender recognition and yet there are a number of exclusions, including some people under the age of 16 and non-binary identity is completely excluded. That is the first problem.

The issue of divorce was raised by Senator Bacik and others. There is no guarantee yet, perhaps the Minister of State can clarify today, that these issues will be dealt with to our satisfaction in the marriage equality legislation when that comes before the House. That would be a step in the right direction and would certainly go some way to dealing with that problem but we should deal with it today.

Senator Norris dealt with pathology and medical recognition. That is absolutely wrong. It should not be happening. It is a relic of how we dealt with these issues in the past. It is a violation of the human rights of transgender people. Very sensible amendments have been tabled to deal with these issues. Because of those core concerns which are shared by other Senators and certain members of the Government and certainly the transgender community and its representative groups, it is necessary to have an amendment such as this accepted. It is unfortunate because one of the concerns of the groups is that the Bill will be forced through without those sensible amendments being accepted and we will have a flawed Bill rather than a landmark human rights, civil rights Bill which genuinely gives recognition to all citizens in the State rather than the step forward that this is but not going far enough. For those reasons I support the amendment but only reluctantly because we can better deal with those issues by the Government accepting many of the amendments which have been tabled by Members of the Opposition.