Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Sometimes it has to do with the ruthlessness of people in power that they think they can shape things whatever way they want to manipulate public opinion and get a result, even if fair play in some way is the loser along the way. That is what is happening in this instance in the way this Bill has been titled. The Title is what will be on the ballot paper. Calling it the Marriage Equality Bill is just one last attempt by the Government to put a leaflet in people's hands as they go to vote stating, "This is the way you should vote if you are a nice person." That is unacceptable; it does not respect the referendum process or the practice followed up to now of choosing non-leading language on the ballot paper. This issue will come up time and again during the debate unless the Title of the Bill is changed. In fairness, it would be very much better if we had a less compliant media which would scrutinise the decision of the Government to adopt a campaigning term that has been used by a highly successful and very talented lobby group - fair play to it - to advance its case for redefining marriage.The Government should have stood back from that but, of course, it has been about manipulation all along.

It has been about manipulation with the Constitutional Convention. We know that the Constitutional Convention was a ready-up in terms of how people ended up on it. There were married couples on the Constitutional Convention and this was supposed to be the organisation that represented the citizenry of Ireland. There were former councillors, political types, former and current members of the Labour Party and, remarkably, they all ended up on this representative group of 66 lay people on the Constitutional Convention. The whole thing was a ready-up to allow-----