Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am proud to support Senator Nash's Bill. I congratulate him on the work he has done to bring this important legislation before the House. At the heart of this Bill is an essential understanding of what equality really means. Equality is not a sense that one privileged group in society can hand down rights to another group in society. That is not what equality means. It is not in the gift of one group to allow another group to be themselves. Equality is very different to that. It is an understanding that we are all equal in every sense and that if any group is deemed or perceived to be lesser, then we do everything in our power to override, undermine, fix and change that.

Over the last number of years when the Labour Party was in government with Fine Gael, we managed to achieve quite a number of things in the sphere of LGBT rights. Marriage equality is an obvious one, as is the Children and Family Relationships Act. There are now mandatory anti-homophobic and anti-transphobic policies in all of our schools and we also enacted the Gender Recognition Act and amended section 37 of the Employment Equality Act. These were five commitments by the Labour Party which were achieved in government.

What we are doing here is acknowledging that while we have achieved a huge amount in the recent years, we must right the wrongs of the past. We have to admit that our legislative provisions before 1993 were wrong and that they undermined people's rights. We have to acknowledge that, as a State, and apologise for it. The legislative provisions at that time and the constitutional provisions, until very recently, made people feel lesser. They made people feel second best and not a full and complete part of this Republic. I say this in the context of the current worldwide situation because often we can be quite complacent about the advancement of the human rights and equality agenda across this State and across Europe. As we look around the world today we see the new political dispensation in Russia and we see the new political situation in the USA, where the Vice President has stated openly his belief that LGBT people can be corrected by some bizarre form of medical intervention. This is the new political dynamic that we are facing in the United States of America. We are saying quite clearly today in Seanad Éireann that this Republic, standing on the edge of Europe, believes that not only do LGBT not need to be corrected but that the fact that LGBT people were not full, complete and absolutely equal members of this Republic in the past is something for which we must apologise. We must be absolutely determined to ensure that we advance this agenda further. It is not correct to suggest that because we had a successful marriage equality referendum or because other legislation has been passed - even this valuable Bill - this will make it easy for members of the LGBT community to come to terms with themselves and to come out to their family and friends in various parts of Ireland. There is still a very dark road ahead, unfortunately, for many young and not-so-young people who still feel as if they live in an Ireland that does not accept them. It is like saying that because the Civil Rights Act was passed in America in the 1960s, African Americans are completely equal in the eyes of all citizens and all states in America. That is not the case.

What we must do in this Republic and in these Houses of the Oireachtas, is ensure that every single Bill that we can pass or Act that we can correct is so passed or corrected. We must also apologise for the wrongs of the past. Just like Senator Nash, I sat my leaving certificate exams in the early 1990s. It is unbelievable to think that at the very same time, my contemporaries or people older than me were criminalised for being who they were and for the love that they felt. I know that the younger generation -those younger than us - find that absolutely unbelievable. What was remarkable at the time of the referendum was the fact that young people, regardless of background, gender or where they were from, found it remarkable that before 1993, engaging in homosexual activity was a criminal act.I know the Minister of State feels strongly about this. I congratulate him for the work he has done heretofore in his equality brief. We have met on a number of different occasions on various different issues. He is a person of deep commitment to equality. As Senator Nash has said, when issues like this come before this House there is often a temptation for Governments to pick holes in things. There is a temptation sometimes for Opposition parties to play politics. In this instance, the Minister of State will acknowledge that Senator Nash has brought forward legislation that is well crafted and has the right motivation behind it. What the Minister of State and his office can do is take it in that spirit and if it needs to be tweaked, changed or improved that can be done at a different Stage of the legislative process.

This House can stand together proudly, collectively and across party, in this Republic and send a message to the rest of the world. Let us not pretend this agenda is going the same direction in every single part of the world because it is not. It is going backwards. It is going backwards in America, Russia and right across the world in many respects. If this House was to restate its absolute commitment to equality for our LGBT brothers and sisters across this land, it would be a powerful symbol at this moment in time. I commend Senator Nash on the work he has done and I commend my Labour colleagues on supporting this Bill. I commend people across this House who are standing in solidarity with the Bill and the Minister of State's endeavours to bring this to the fore. It will mean an awful lot for people who lived in the shadows of this State before 1993. None of us can understand what a measure such as this passed in the House today will mean for people who lived in those dark days.