Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

That was the waste of time, which Senator Norris and I opposed when we argued that its introduction was pointless. We further argued at that point for the removal of the constitutional offence. The referendum was necessary to tidy up what is the foundational legal document of the State. As I think Senator Mullen will agree, the text of the Constitution matters. Having gone through all of the consultations, which Senator Ned O'Sullivan and others spoke about, it is very important that we move to hold the referendum. This legislation is now necessary to give effect to the desire of the people who voted by a majority of 64.85% to remove the offence of blasphemy. I was involved as one of the political representatives on the Constitutional Convention in 2013, which also recommended the removal of the offence of blasphemy. It should never have been in the Constitution and should certainly not have been enacted into statutory format in 2009. This is a long overdue measure to give effect to the will of the people on this issue.

I do not believe that any one in this House is anti-religion. I am certainly not anti-religion and I believe very strongly in the need to ensure freedom of religious belief. As with freedom of expression, this freedom is important in any modern pluralist state. I spoke recently on this at an event with Archbishop Eamon Martin. We had something of a disagreement on the role of religion in the public sphere in that the archbishop seemed to suggest that politicians should be beholden in some way to religious institutions in bringing forth political views. I spoke very strongly in support of the separation of church and state because that separation enshrines religious freedom for individuals. If we start to give a dominant position to one religion in our laws or foundational documents, that would clearly be at the expense of people of other religions and none. That is a very dangerous position to be in and one we see in theocracies around the world.

We may also ask what tangible effect the text of a constitutional document or the existence of a statutory of blasphemy has. I have come from an excellent symposium in Trinity College this morning on diversity and inclusion in the workplace which we ran with the law school of Trinity College in conjunction with Matheson lawyers. The symposium heard powerful and poignant testimony from individuals who have come out as LGBTQ, including one woman who was the first person in Ireland to make a workplace gender transition. We heard very poignant testimonies about the chilling effect that laws that were discriminatory against LGBTQ people had on them and on the conditions in their workplace and how proud they were of an Irish society that is now much more inclusive. One woman, a senior executive, spoke about how proud she is to live openly as a gay woman in Ireland but how fearful she was on a recent holiday to a country which did not enshrine the same freedoms in law for gay people. We have to remember the tangible effect that laws can have, even if no prosecutions are brought. The existence of laws on the Statute Book have a chilling effect. On Culture Night, the Minister of State's Department in its offices on St. Stephen's Green organised an excellent exhibition on the history of censorship in Ireland and I was delighted to go into it. One might ask what impact censorship laws have. For a long time they had a very chilling effect on freedom of expression in this country not only for authors whose books were banned but for anyone who sought to speak about sexuality, women's sexual expression or reproductive rights in this country. Laws have a chilling effect. It does not need prosecutions or convictions to feel that chill. No one knows that better than my dear friend and colleague, Senator Norris, who was so brave for so long in standing up against laws that were discriminatory and that had that chilling effect. I wanted to put that on the record.

As I said previously about the referendum of 26 October last year, the continued presence of the offence of blasphemy in the Constitution was not tenable in a modern democratic state. Any one who reads the history of it will know it is a medieval crime. It has no place in the Constitution or on the Statute Book of a modern republic. The change, as others have said, was one that was recommended for a long time, by the Law Reform Commission back in 1991, by the expert Constitution Review Group in 1996, and by the Constitutional Convention in 2013. My only regret about the referendum is that we did not also delete the other similarly anachronistic offences referred to Article 40.6.1o.i of the Constitution relating to seditious or indecent matter. I put this on the record when we were debating the referendum Bill. My only quibble with the referendum is that we should have taken the opportunity to delete those other references which are also there in the article.