Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Stanton, to the House and I commend the Labour group on bringing forward this Bill, which my party, Fianna Fáil, will be happy to support. I am glad to hear Senator Nash mentioning our colleague, Senator Norris, who cannot be with us, and to remember the great work he did in this regard for decades when he was a lone voice in championing people who had an alternative view of sexuality at the time.

Someone wrote "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." It is very hard to retrospectively forgive or understand people for committing what were considered crimes at the time. Members have talked about when they sat their leaving certificate exams. I sat my leaving certificate exams in the 1960s. Anyone of my generation growing up in rural Ireland, of which the Leas-Chathaoirleach is one-----