Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to encourage Members from Fianna Fáil to support the Provision of Objective Sex Education Bill 2018 which is being voted on in the Dáil today. I found the reasoning for its opposition to the issue last night to be somewhat pathetic, as was pointed out by Deputy Ruth Coppinger. Fianna Fáil claimed that the issue would be dealt with in the coming weeks by the Joint Committee on Education and Skills. However, if any level of research had been done on the issue it would have found that the characteristic spirit clause, which is effectively a veto on curriculum for ethos-based schools, is by far the biggest obstacle to inclusive and robust relationships and sexuality education, RSE.

Fianna Fáil's representative went on to say that the Oireachtas should not dictate the curriculum in schools. However, it was Fianna Fáil, when in government, that implemented the characteristic spirit clause which has dictated the curriculum for the last few decades. If we wish to see a curriculum that does not rely on dogma, that is fact-based and objective, and that equips our young people with positive values regarding their sexual health, we should absolutely support this Bill. I hope Members of Fianna Fáil in the Lower House would accept that. I held a briefing with Senators Lynn Ruane and Grace O'Sullivan and not one Fianna Fáil Member was present.

I would also like to say to the people moving around this city with LGBT rainbow flags and graphic images relating to the referendum campaign that they may have the space to display those images outside Leinster House today but that they will be met with LGBT visibility when they protest our spaces. I commend Radical Queers Resist and other LGBT people and our allies who have sent that message loud and clear. The agenda of the LGBT community is about redefining a social code that is repressive to us all, and that includes the right to bodily autonomy and self-determination. What does this come back to? Those same people outside would have opposed contraception, marriage equality, the decriminalisation of homosexuality and, probably, sex work. The people at the gates of Leinster House with graphic images are on the side of history that says that any sex that does not result in a family is abhorrent and wrong.