Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I would like to be identified with the sentiments the Cathaoirleach has expressed about the departure from this Chamber of Senator David Norris and to echo the sentiments expressed by the President and Taoiseach of Ireland and the colleagues who have spoken already on this matter.Senator Norris was elected for the first time in 1987. Believe it or not, I was elected to Dáil Éireann in the same year. It seems a long time ago – a different century. He did something which I never did: that was, he held his seat for all the intervening period. From the moment that he was elected he championed the causes in which he believed. Sometimes we forget in this Chamber that when his fellow Trinity Senator, Mary Robinson, proposed a Bill to repeal the ban on contraception, she could not even get a seconder in this House, even to have it printed. The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin at the time said that her Bill was a curse on this country. Across the intervening decades this society has been transformed.

What I want to say about Senator Norris's contribution is that it has not simply been in the area of gay rights - a cause in which he not merely passionately believed - but in which he acted. He set up the Hirschfeld Centre in which he encouraged other people to stand up for themselves. He brought cases to the Irish courts. Again, to my slight shame, the Irish courts system let him down in the Supreme Court decision, which effectively threw out his case, and he had to go to Strasbourg to put manners on the system of justice which we had at the time. All of that required immense courage. It has been said here - the President said it in his letter - that courage is one of the hallmarks of David Norris's contribution to Irish public life, but it has always been done with a sense of fun and irreverence. He does not take himself all that seriously, although he does have quite an opinion of himself.