Colette Kelleher (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, and our guests from TENI, in particular Dylan and Kirsty who spoke so movingly and lovingly to us yesterday in the audiovisual room during the briefing on the Bill. I am delighted to support it and commend Senators Warfield, Norris and Grace O'Sullivan for bringing it forward. Senator Grace O'Sullivan is my colleague in the Civil Engagement group.

I know from speaking to young people in recent days that their everyday lives are impeded by a number of practical difficulties. There are issues in terms of obtaining passports and denial and foot dragging from schools, all of which directly affects people's lives. I am aware that the LGBT study launched by former President, Mary McAleese, last year found that when compared with the wider population lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people had twice the level of self-harm, three times the level of attempted suicide and four times the level of severe stress, anxiety and depression than others. If for no other reason, those mental health issues are why today's Bill is so important.

I would like to put on the record some of the correspondence I received on the issue because the words I received from other people speak more powerfully than I ever could. One citizen emailed me to say:

I wish there was a means by which I could express how much Bills like this affect my life. Bills such as this let people like me know there is light at the end of the tunnel and that if we keep reaching, keep trying, we will live in a world where people who accept us are the majority and that we won't be considered weird or ill or crazy. Bills like this mean that one day, when I come out to my parents, even if they don't get it or don't understand it, they will still accept it, accept me, accept that I am their daughter but I am sometimes their son and sometimes their child. Bills like this allow us just to live.

Another person said:

I am a non-binary transgender person marginalised in both general society and in my queer community. This is a state-sponsored and legitimised discrimination because of my utter exclusion from the Gender Recognition Act as it stands. The law is supposed to be for the just morality that a population strives for, a guiding force for progress. This is not how it currently stands. You can help fix that.

We can help fix it today. The calls to fix the law have not only come from young transgender people. Youth leaders like the current President of the Trinity College Student Union, Kieran McNulty, have said that young people in Ireland should not have to wait until they are 18 to declare who they really are. He says we need to give 16 and 17 year olds the opportunity to self-declare and legally declare their gender.

There is no doubt that we have made phenomenal, unimaginable progress on LGBT issues over the last decade but more needs to be done. We should not rest until we have full equality and inclusion for our LGBT brothers and sisters and sons and daughters. Passing this Bill will send a positive, reaffirming message to our young transgender, queer, non-binary or gender fluid citizens. Rejecting it will do the opposite. I ask the Minister to set out in the response the timeline and process for the required review of the Act. It would be useful for us to have a sense of what that is. In conclusion, we must trust and listen in general to young people. We need to empower and enable them to live life to its full promise. For that reason, I urge everyone to support the Bill.