Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Senator Pauline O'Reilly as Acting Leader. I wish to take a moment to mark the tragic death of Eoin Collins after a short illness. He passed away on 1 February in the care of his family in Lucan, just three months after the untimely and sudden death of his husband, Josep Adalla, in November.

Eoin was one of the principal architects of the extraordinary progress and change for LGBTQI people over the past few decades. As one of the founders of the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network, GLEN, he was a key driver of legislative reform and progress towards equality for LGBTQI people. His fingerprints are on much of the groundbreaking change we have seen over the past 20 years. Eoin and his colleagues campaigned for many years for decriminalisation and having achieved that in 1993, they then campaigned for wide-ranging multi-ground equality legislation in close collaboration with a range of other equality organisations. He then worked with the Rainbow Coalition and Labour Minister for Equality and Law Reform, Mervyn Taylor, to bring forward the Employment Equality and Equal Status Bills that were crucial in building a fairer, more equal Ireland for LGBTQIA people and for all those included under the nine grounds of that legislation. Throughout this period and prior to working on the staff or GLEN, Eoin worked with Nexus Research Ireland for more than two decades and was a key figure in community development across Ireland.

As a facilitator, writer and activist, his capacity for vision and empathy for change placed him at the heart of many human rights struggles. His work was always tempered by critical self-scrutiny and genuine humility. His work allowed him opportunities and spaces to make lasting changes in dealing with issues of discrimination, exclusion and marginalisation. With the support of The Atlantic Philanthropies, Eoin then worked on GLEN's staff to build on the foundation of legislative progress to drive real, meaningful change in the lives of LGBTQIA people. He worked with Governments, politicians, including many in this House, civil and public servants and civil society bodies to ensure LGBTQIA people could be free and equal. This work included transformative change in education, physical, mental and sexual health, workplace and immigration reform, the first research in Ireland on trans equality and, in particular, the equal recognition and protection of LGBTQIA relationships and families. Eoin was a member of the Government's Colley group, which charted a way to marriage and constitutional equality for same-sex couples and was instrumental in the group's findings that only marriage equality would deliver that equality.He is one of the principle drivers of the work to secure comprehensive civil partnership legislation - which is possible without a referendum - and the foundations of family recognition legislation, both of which paved the way for the eventual success of that extraordinary referendum in 2015.

He leaves an incredible legacy of hard won progress for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual, LGBTQIA, people. While we still have significant work to do, our task is made easier through the transformational change he was a major part of bringing about. I would like to pass on my condolences to the family of Mr. Eoin Collins, and express my personal, profound gratitude as a member of the LGBTQIA community, for all the work he did to make Ireland a better place for all. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam.