Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the people who have joined us in the Visitors Gallery. Céad míle fáilte. I thank Senator Nash for his excellent work on this initiative. I also thank the Government for facilitating this motion.

State apologies represent significant moments for this institution and the people it serves. I recall today the women of the Magdalen laundries and the survivors of those laundries who received an apology from former Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny, on behalf of the State in February 2013 and, also, the State apology by An Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, to Joanne Hayes in January of this year. When speaking about the trauma endured by Joanne, An Taoiseach said it reflected the extent to which Ireland was such a different place in the 1980s to what it is now.

The laws that were repealed in the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 1993 cast a long shadow over Irish life. They condemned, shamed and harassed men who simply did not fit into the mould of a world so wrongfully narrow and prejudiced in its outlook. They gave rise to an air of criminality that made certain a climate of isolation, discrimination and, in some cases, prosecution. People bypassed Dublin entirely and left Ireland behind, landing in cities like London and New York to pursue their right to exercise a life different to that of the mainstream. They went in search of a haven. For so many, and tragically so, the brevity of life in the shadow of the AIDS crisis would become a reality. In 1987, an article in The New York Timesstated:

In this neighborhood that gained renown for its culture of openly expressed homosexuality, the predominant concern of the living is now dealing with death and dying. So many people have died AIDS that many residents say they can no longer count the number of friends they have lost.

The decision to stop counting the number of friends lost is something that is tragically shared by many LGBTQI people in Ireland, including me. We stand with them in remembering loss and grief while knowing that significant advances have been made in treatment and methods of prevention. We have confidence, too, that more will be done and we are ready to campaign for as much. Ireland must commence a consultation process for the development of a national AIDS memorial and a consultation that engages with people who have lost loved ones and friends and also with the wider community.

I commend the motion. It marks a necessary milestone for my community whereby the State reflects on its actions, proclaims its wrongdoing and, in doing so, asks the forgiveness of those criminalised and those indirectly affected. Sinn Féin and I believe that a State apology is an appropriate step, but I hear the concerns of people who are of the view that there is no way to apologise for the dark days they have endured. I was 15 months old when homosexuality was decriminalised. While I will never fully understand the struggle that those to whom I refer endured, their fearlessness and energy in having been forced to live in the long shadow of criminalisation has empowered and politicised me and so many others of my generation.

It took a 16-year legal battle, undertaken by Senator Norris, to shame the State into accepting that homosexuality was not something that it could criminalise into non-existence; it took the murder of Declan Flynn in Fairview Park, for which those responsible were never truly brought to justice owing to the conservative attitudes among members of our Judiciary; it took the fear, trauma and loss of the HIV and AIDS crises; and it took countless lives being scourged by brutal assaults, bullying, homophobia, isolation and marginalisation on the part of society, the State and its institutions. Only then did the State, following years of Government indifference and even after the European Court of Human Rights ruling, act.

Recent developments such as civil partnership, civil marriage equality and gender recognition have laid the foundations for a new Ireland. While we have come a long way more needs to be done in terms of parental rights for same-sex couples, hate crime legislation, a ban on conversion therapy and so on. I recently attended the launch of the National Library of Ireland inclusion strategy, at which officials spoke with pride about the holding of the Irish Queer Archive, the most comprehensive archive relating to LGBT history in Ireland. Within that, I note an article in The Irish Timesby Nell McCafferty in September 1975 which reports a case in the Dublin District Court involving two men arrested by a member of An Garda Síochána having been seen exiting the same toilet cubicle. The judge made remarks such as, "It's a completely unnatural performance" and the defence solicitor posed questions to an expert witness doctor such as, "Would you say that he [a defendant] could have a fruitful relationship with a member of the opposite sex?" and "That they could marry and have children?". This was our justice system 43 years ago.

I thank Tony Walsh and the National LGBT Federation, NXF, for their work in sharing our queer history with the National Library and, by extension, the State and for putting confidence in the State. This is our recent history. It is a lived legacy of so many gay and bisexual men. They deserve better. Our community deserves better and I welcome this motion.