Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his reply but the first thing that strikes me is the tense of the response. Phrases like "the CSO has advised that for people who have such a difficulty, they can mark both male and female boxes" suggest that this is an old script, written at the time that this was first raised and before census night. It suggests to me that the Government has not actually considered the issue I have raised at all, which is about the illegality that I propose was a part of what the CSO recommended. It also illustrates that the CSO knew and foresaw that this was going to be an issue for a long time and yet it went ahead with proposing an illegal approach to the filling out of the census form. Was any consideration given to encouraging people to just not fill out that box? Would that have been a legal satisfaction of the requirement on the citizen filling out the census form? Would that not have been a better solution?

The issue here is that if transgender people can choose not to answer a question on their sex because they are uncomfortable about doing so, then what other sections of the form can be ignored because people are uncomfortable with them? The census asks very personal questions about people's health and relationship status, for example. Indeed, asking farmers to state the acreage of their farms, as everybody knows, is to go where many farmers would not seek to go. If such respondents were uncomfortable about answering the questions accurately, would they be entitled to a dispensation from the CSO? If one question can be answered wrongly, deliberately, then surely all questions could, theoretically, be ignored or answered wrongly. That is the key point.