Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister very much for taking my Commencement matter today. Medical and psychological professionals throughout the world have stated that LGBTI people who experience conversion therapy are almost twice as likely to think about or attempt suicide than their peers who have not experienced conversion therapy. Let us be very clear; conversion therapy is based on a particular mindset that denies that people are actually gay. It is a mindset that denies people's sexual and gender identity. I am a proponent of the Lady Gaga "born this way" mentality. How dare anybody tell another person they are not what they say they are? For whatever reason, whether religious or otherwise, people assert a right to actively engage people in conversion therapy. This only purports to be a therapy and is actually quite a violent psychological abuse of an individual associated with shame which leads to the consequent statistics on suicidal ideation among members of the community post conversion therapy. Any treatment aimed at changing a person's sexual orientation or gender identity is a shameful application of something that should not be tolerated in any society and particularly in ours.

I appreciate that there is a commitment in the programme for Government, which the Minister has reiterated, to bring in a legislative ban on conversion therapy. I also appreciate that, on 8 July, the Minister launched a research programme into conversion therapy and the experiences of people coming out of it in Ireland. I am concerned that while we research, people are actively being abused and undermined in who they are. The psychological damage is ongoing. I am anxious that we very quickly move to define conversion therapy. It should be about the objective and we should not micromanage or get into the particular types of therapy, who does it or how it is done. Anything that seeks to undermine the sexual or gender identity of an individual should be banned. It is one thing to seek psychological support in how to live or how to come out to one's family. I appreciate that strain of therapy but that is not what this is.Conversion therapy has a very definite objective so we must legislate to ban the objective. I suggest that because I am concerned about some programmes. The likes of the international Living Waters programme purport to be about helping people who may have been victims of sexual assault or abuse. The operators of these programmes bring people in under that guise but have other agendas. Once people are in the vulnerable atmosphere of a group counselling session where there is a discussion and perhaps more information revealed but other objectives then come to the fore. We must guard against that objective and make sure that we do not permit that objective to be permissible. Conversion therapy is tantamount to hate speech and the denial of who a person is so we must legislate against it, as a matter of urgency.