Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

First of all, I was a member of the Joint Committee on Gender Equality that considered the recommendations of the citizens' assembly and I may be incorrect but I do not recall the Senator attending that committee to make these views heard at that stage. This Oireachtas committee considered the recommendations of the citizens' assembly, what it had said, and its detailed reports. We heard from the organisers of the citizens' assembly and we heard from participants of the citizens' assembly. We worked for a period of nine months in the Joint Committee on Gender Equality to reflect on the work of what is, the Senator will agree, a public consultation of the broadest sort, considered over a very considerable period of time through Covid-19 and people worked extremely hard. Forgive me if I am mistaken but I do not recall the Senator's active participation in that committee at which point he could have contributed any or all of these views. He could have either gotten himself onto this committee or attended in any way and shared those views. As I said, forgive me if I am mistaken in that regard but I just do not recall it.

Nor do I recall, and forgive me if I am mistaken, the Senator's attendance at the justice prelegislative hearings on the hate crime Bill. Again, I was Vice Chair of that committee and I recall the work that came up in great detail. The issues there were essentially about how to deal with a scenario in which, for example, a case from the UK where a young boy with Down's syndrome had been beaten and while he was being beaten slurs associated with Down's syndrome in the past were used. The question was whether or not that should be an aggravating factor in sentencing. I believe it should be but that was the question around hate speech.

What has happened since then is this effort to morph and distort a lot of that work into something I genuinely cannot even follow. I cannot even follow what the Senator is saying because the things are so convoluted and conflated. The Senator raised the question of public consultation. There has been a Citizen's Assembly on Gender Equality in the most broad sense. There was a nine-month Oireachtas committee which dealt with those recommendations and on which I sat. These issues did not present themselves in any way. They have come from a different place. The Senator has said things such as that the Government is trying to pull the wool over people's eyes and that this is a risk issue. Why did the Senator not come and talk about it? Why did he not come and engage?