David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, who is a decent man. His heart and intellect are in the right place. The Minister of State indicated that the Bill shows the relevance and value of Seanad Éireann. Many of the amendments accepted and introduced by the Dáil were argued for passionately in this House, and it is a great relief to see them included as a result of action in the Dáil.

I sympathised with the Minister of State when he stated that he had hoped to amend the Bill's requirement for people to be divorced, which is an absolute and utter absurdity. This has been held up by a couple of legal actions. I honestly think that although every citizen has the right to take an action, vexatious actions - and these, in my opinion, are two vexatious actions - should be dealt with summarily, as they were in the High Court, and simply swept out of the way. They idea of waiting for two and a half years is an absolute thoroughgoing absurdity. I imagine the two men who took these cases would not feel this should happen. The people have expressed their will massively. Two individuals have sought to frustrate this, and they have not really produced any cogent grounds for so doing. Just to hold up a Bill for this type of malarkey is a complete and utter load of rubbish, but it is a fact and we must face it.

The Minister of State said this was not the end of the matter and that all types of new things would transpire. They have started transpiring. They transpired on my desk, because I received a charming letter from a very interesting and civilised person who drew attention to the situation of people with non-binary identity. With the indulgence of the House, I will mention a few points which are relevant to the discussion on the Bill. In the United States, research has been done which found that approximately one third of transgender people identify as non-binary, either sometimes male and sometimes female or other than male or female. Scottish research suggests that the figure is approximately one in five. US research estimates that the total number of transgender people may be between 0.1% and 0.5% of the population.If we take the lower estimate, it suggests there are 4,500 transgender people in Ireland of whom approximately 900 may be in this category of non-binary.

What these people who describe themselves as non-binary, and we are again in the area of self-description, have in common with transgender people is that the gender assigned to them at birth is not the gender they feel enshrines their reality.

According to my correspondent, the lack of a third gender option means that the Bill will continue to deny a basic human right to those of us who cannot identify as male or female - the legal recognition of our existence as the people we are. The Yogiakarta Principle No. 3 deals with legal recognition and provides that states should take all necessary legislative, administrative and other measures to ensure the procedures exist whereby all Government issued identity papers, which indicate a person's gender-sex, including birth certificates, passports, etc., reflect the person's self defined gender identity. The Minister made the point that this is not an international treaty but rather a series of principles and so on, but my correspondent points to the fact that the introduction to the principles makes it clear that they are not a new agreement but an interpretation of already existing and legally binding agreements.

To those of us who are elderly and whose sexuality has expired on the way, this may seem to be an unusual refinement. It is only in recent days that I heard of this binary situation but, interestingly, a number of other countries have already introduced a third category for gender in state issued identity documents, and a good example is Australia. Another, in the case of passports, is New Zealand. The Australian Human Rights Commission conducted an in-depth survey of how gender is recorded in state documents and issued guidelines which specify that all state documents can use a third gender option.

I place that before the House but I have to say I am rather exhausted from all this. In my day one was gay, full stop, and that included women and so on. In that regard, now we would need the entire alphabet.

May I recognise the distinguished and wonderful people in the Gallery? I will single out two because they are heroes who go back generations. I am talking about Dr. Lydia Foy and Michael Farrell, who has been such a noble representative of the legal profession.