Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I refer to proceedings at the health committee where are essential to this issue. Senator Jillian van Turnhout asked Dr. Shannon whether he had been misunderstood when he said marriage was the gold standard for families. In his response he said he had been misunderstood and that he had been talking about marriage in the context of all citizens having access to it. However, it is clear, given the question the Senator put to him, that he had certainly not been misunderstood on that point because that is precisely what he saidHe was speaking in the context of the civil partnership legislation and saying - arguing for it, in effect - that it would not, to use his own words, "diminish or demean the marital status." He said that the civil partnership Bill proposals continued to see married as "the gold standard" and the best predictor of the durability of the relationship. He was talking about that in the context of not all citizens having access. I think those comments were made in 2008 when nobody was talking about same-sex marriage. By the way, Dr. Shannon is part of the reason I am a Member of the Seanad because he once beat me in an election for auditorship of the literary and debating society in NUI Galway, as a result of which I entered student politics.