Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

As it is the spring equinox, I would like to wish everybody a happy lengthening of the days. It is also international Down's syndrome day. It is a day to reflect on the joy that those good people bring into so many people's lives, the inspiration they are for so many. It is also a day to reflect on our need to include them and people with disabilities generally more and more in our society. We have had debates here during which we have probably all spoken from time to time about special needs, education and so on. It is a good day to remember that we still have a long way to go towards genuine inclusion.

I compliment people and companies in the private sector who make space within their workforce, sometimes quite visibly, for persons with Down's syndrome, who make a wonderful contribution. I also pay tribute to those people, prominent and not so prominent, who do their best to make them more visible in our society. I would encourage colleagues, if they have not already seen it, to look at a documentary called "A World Without Down's Syndrome?", produced by a woman called Sally Phillips a number of years ago. Some Senators may know of Sally as an actress. She featured in "Bridget Jones's Diary" and she set out to explore in an emotional but quite compelling way why it is that with increasing possibilities of screening, such children are being screened out in other jurisdictions, to the point where it is predicted that after a period of years children with Down's syndrome simply will not be born. There is a lot of food for thought for us in that. I would recommend to people to watch that particular documentary, produced by Sally and featuring her son, Olly. It is really very compelling.

Most of us have been called on to comment on what our colleague said on social media. It is an embarrassing situation because the person making that call, Austin Stack, is somebody who needs to be heard. He is an important voice for the justice that is due to his family over what happened to his father.Therefore, it would be wrong of us to engage in a kind of an embarrassed collegiality and just pipe down. Equally, it would be wrong for us to engage in the business of virtue signalling, which goes on a lot in politics these days where we want to show how well behaved we are. Senator Devine has already apologised but I would like her to have the space to do so in this House as well. I have always believed that a culture of allowing people to up their game and learn from their mistakes, and let us face the fact that we all make mistakes, is better than a culture of calling for heads to roll. The reconciliation, apology or amends must be sincere and for too long there has been tribalism in politics where people say they embrace new politics but fall back to embracing oppositionalism and hostility.