David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is lovely for the Senator but it would be awful for me. It would a disastrous liquidation of the assets which from a financial point of view is a complete and utter mistake but I will not go into all of that. We had a most interesting discussion in the surgery this morning. There was another point I wanted to make about gender reassignment, but it has escaped me. I am completely in favour of it now, much more so than I was six months or a year ago, through meeting repeatedly with some of these very remarkable people. I know now what I was going to say.

When I was young 60 years ago, everything was tidied up and edited so that everybody could have a nice, neat, tidy life and nobody would be upset and the neighbours would not talk about somebody wearing a pair of rugby trousers and coming in a skirt or any of this sort of stuff. All of this was tidied away as if it did not exist. To be a citizen of this country one has to be republican, Roman Catholic, heterosexual and white, naturally enough, and there are a few other things. I only hit one of them. I was kind of pink so I got away with being white, but I was not any of the other things and it was quite uncomfortable. Therefore, I am very glad this legislation is being put in place and the Minister of State has graciously accepted an amendment, apparently, which I very much welcome. It shows the constructive way in which he is facing legislation and I promise not to speak quite so much on the following amendments.