Caít Keane (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Kevin Humphreys, to the House. I listened to the earlier Stage of the debate. I thank him for agreeing to consider amendment No. 1.

Like others who have spoken I will not pretend I am an expert but I have done a lot of reading, looked at submissions and I have listened to people. I wish to refer to research and I ask Members to think about it. I have been dealing with children all my life, in particular small children in Montessori schools and preschool children. Gender identity is usually formed by the age of three and is extremely difficult to change after that. Formation commonly concludes between the ages of four and six. That might be startling but it is referenced. I will not bore the House with all the details but that reference in particular is fromZucker. Another article of interest was in The Nurse Practitionerjournal. Gender identity is influenced by others, by social interactions and a child’s own personal interest. Understanding gender identity can be broken down into four parts: understanding the concept of gender and learning gender roles, standards and stereotypes; identifying with parents; and forming gender preferences. The final one is particularly important. Barbara Newmann examined development through life from a psychological perspective. I do not pretend to be an expert on the matter but one reads the experts when one wants information. A three-year old can identify himself or herself as a boy or girl but they do not yet fully understand the implications of gender. That could probably apply to every single one of us. We do not fully understand the implications of gender and we leave it to the medical experts in various fields.

I welcome the Bill. It is a major a major step forward for the Minister of State to bring the Bill to the House. We cannot get everything right on day one but we must leave the door open to make changes. I welcome in particular the review. I hope the Minister of State will be able to reduce the age before the review. Could he give a commitment that the matter will be open for consideration given the support provided by studies dating from Freud, Piaget, Kohlbergand others? There was denial for so long and it is only now that we are tackling the issue. Other countries are more advanced than we are but I will not get into the details. Two countries that are quite advanced in this regard are Argentina and the Netherlands. I have a review of the situation in various countries. We are playing catch up. We do not have to reinvent the wheel. We can look at what has worked elsewhere, and what has been changed in other countries. I urge the Minister of State to examine the matter in depth.