Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

It takes no small amount of bravery to come out in an industry with thousands of players, some of whom may still be in the closet and fear how they will be treated by supporters, teammates and opponents. He is the first active male professional footballer in England to come out since Justin Fashanu did so 30 years ago. Justin's tragic death has cast a long shadow over professional football. Ireland is a country of sports lovers and football plays a huge role in that so it is beyond time for us to grab the thorny issue of homophobia in sport and call it out. The players who represent us in our communities, counties and internationally should feel safe to come out. I wish Jake the best for the future in his career and life. I hope his coming out gives hope and comfort to those still living in fear of coming out as their true, authentic selves. We must show leadership in the House that homophobia, biphobia and transphobia will not be tolerated.

Students face the ongoing issue of Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI, grants being affected by pandemic unemployment payments. I ask that the Leader to write to the Minister to get onto this issue. Perhaps the Minister should come into the House to discuss it. It is unacceptable that students directed to take pandemic unemployment payments for work they lost during Covid are now losing out on SUSI. I warned this would happen at the time, yet not much was done. The response from the Minister until now has been that students should just appeal to SUSI, which is not acceptable. I do not think the Minister and his Department officials have any appreciation of how difficult it is for students to have the rug pulled out from under them like this. It is not fair to penalise people for taking pandemic unemployment payments and then expect them to go through a complex appeals process. I would like the Leader to write to the Minister on this as a matter of urgency.