Sharon Keogan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I also welcome the Minister of State. This is the first time I have addressed him. I congratulate him on his appointment and offer him continued best wishes.

I thank the Minister of State for taking the time to discuss this matter of the utmost importance, which will continue to impact more and more women as time goes by.We have a wonderful tradition of sport in this country and our sportswomen are going from strength to strength. From qualifying for this summer's Hockey World Cup, to Leona Maguire's rise through the world ranks and captain Lucy Mulhall leading the team into their first-ever HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series final in Seville, this small country has been put on the map of women's sport internationally. It is a wonderful example to the girls and young women in the country and is worth protecting.

However, there is currently a glaring issue with fair competition when it comes women's sport in Ireland. It stems from the introduction of self-ID legislation in 2015. Through that legislation, the State declared that being a women is in fact a feeling and that biological reality is not especially relevant when it comes to the business of being a woman. We are now told that men who say they are women are also women and merely had been born in the wrong body. The notion of bodies is important for women in many areas but none more than sport and that is what I am here to speak about. I tell the Minister of State that bodies, not identities, play sport. The publicly-funded lobby group Transgender Equality Network Ireland, TENI, is campaigning for inclusion in sport. This is a misnomer. Men who identify as women already have a category of sport open to them, namely, the male category. What this lobby group is actually seeking is the erasure of the single-sex female category and its replacement with a mixed-sex one. This will obliterate fair competition in women's sport and will endanger female athletes in contact sports. Does the Minister of State recognise the role biological sex plays in women's sport? What steps will be taken to preserve female sports, given the danger posed by self-ID legislation?

Irish sportswomen are excelling but the support for that has not always been forthcoming. It was not that long ago our women's soccer team were forced to change in airport toilets and return their tracksuits to share with other teams. The spectre of humiliation is never far away. However, this latest attack on women's sport will have the highest impact of all. Across the pond, US President Joe Biden dismantled the Title IX provision, allowing for biological males to compete in female sports. Since then, the sporting world has looked on in disbelief as a man who previously swam in the US elite men's college competition now claims to identify as a woman and has just gone on to win a set of records in three different events. The same individual will compete against an Irish female Olympian in collegiate competition in the coming months, so we can already see the impact this is having on our sportswomen. Strikingly, there are no examples of women who identify as men taking podium places or threatening records held by men. However, there are examples of women who identify as men competing and succeeding on women's teams. This is entirely appropriate as they are of the same sex. Men's sport remains untouched by gender ideology. Across the world, sportsmen and sportswomen are speaking out against the erasure of women's sports. They include Martina Navratilova, Daley Thompson, Michael Phelps, Sharron Davies and notably, two bio-males who now identify as women, namely, Caitlyn Jenner and Renée Richards. In light of this, will the Minister of State confirm he supports fair competition and safety for women and girls in their chosen sport? How does he plan to protect these rights when all single-sex provisions have been dismantled through self-ID?