Rónán Mullen (Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimhe an Aire Stáit. The Minister of State is very welcome. It is good to engage with her and I thank her for coming to the House. There is a fair degree of concern among many people with regard to the Government's capacity to consult the general public on matters of public importance and to take on board feedback, specifically. Consultation with advocacy NGOs that are Government-funded may be high on the Government's agenda but when it comes to wider consultation it sometimes seem that views that are received are often sidelined. The widespread public consultation on the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 eventually resulted in substantial opposition to aspects of the Bill being ignored and a small cohort of lobbyists being heard instead. That has led, in my view, to a Bill that is toxic to freedom of expression and that smuggles in a bizarre and indeed dangerous definition of gender.

A similar scenario played out with the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment and its public consultation on the new social, personal, and health education syllabi. Much of the feedback received in first round consultations was ignored and it was only when ordinary people fought back that the Minister intervened and an adjusted syllabus was produced.

There is concern now that public consultations on gender equality referendums may be disregarded. It is now more than four months since the closure of that consultation and it is time for the Minister to share the outcomes of that consultation with us. This is important because the Government's understanding of and attitude toward gender is a key issue in the context of those referendums. I believe the Government's understanding and attitude to gender and its meaning is emerging as a risk issue for Irish people, to be frank. The Government has tried to pull the wool over people's eyes with a circular explanation of gender in the hate speech and hate crimes Bill. It does not use the term "gender spectrum" but that is what is implied. In the Bill, gender is any gender identity or expression that one wishes it to be and there are more than 100 such identity terms currently known.

For ordinary folk brought up on common sense and informed by science, gender and sex are effectively synonymous. Gender is a noun and gender is either male or female. Gender can also be employed in an adjectival sense, as in gender expression or gender identity. These are ways people see themselves, a dimension of their own perception of who they are. As such, gender expression and gender identity are subjective ideas and as such they are the person's own business with no necessary external manifestation in society. There can be as many identities as there are people or personalities.

In the context of these forthcoming gender referendums where the definition of gender will be crucial, it is troubling that the Government wants us to believe that gender-sex and gender identity are the same, that the noun can be replaced by attaching gender to a completely different noun and still mean the same thing. To take an example, linguistically tennis and a tennis ball are not the same thing, and a car and a car race are not the same thing. As such, gender is not the same thing as gender identity. This is not a mere word game. What the Government has been asking us to swallow is that gender, as in the male-female binary, is no longer of importance and that it must give way to this idea of identity. This is saying that being a man or a woman is no longer a valuable description for society or for law but that one must be viewed as existing along this imaginary spectrum. The law does not have feelings. The law sees men and women and the consequences that flow from the difference as significant. If there were no real world consequences to male-female differences, then the law would not distinguish and that is as far as it should go. The trick of mixing gender and gender identity was pulled, effectively, at the citizens' assembly and has been baked into the hate Bill. It is really important, therefore, since this issue is connected with the likely content of proposed referendums, that we hear at an early date what citizens have been saying about all of this in the consultation. I do not think we should be months on from that consultation without having heard from the Government and that is why I am asking for a report back on the consequence of that consultation.

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | 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?

Rónán Mullen (Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Is the Minister of State asking me a question?

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I am asking why the Senator did not engage.

Rónán Mullen (Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I will tell the Minister of State why. It was very difficult for people to get on that gender committee. I think my friend and colleague, Senator Keogan, was kept off the committee.

Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Senator, the Minister has four minutes to speak.

Rónán Mullen (Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thought the Minister of State was asking me a question.

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I genuinely did ask a question, yes.

Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State can conclude any time she wishes.

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The Citizen's Assembly on Gender Equality made three recommendations that centred on the Constitution: to insert gender equality and non-discrimination; to remove the reference of women within the home; and to amend Article 41 to protect family life to make sure that children in the family are not discriminated against whether their parents are married or not. As I said, great work was done both by the citizen's assembly in particular during Covid-19, and then at the Oireachtas committee thereafter. An interdepartmental group has been established to try to progress a lot of that work but there is no question of not having had public consultation. It was a broad citizen's assembly in the way that there have been citizen's assemblies. As a deliberative democracy principle, Ireland has set itself apart through the use of citizen's assemblies to look at various different issues. We have had good success in that. The analysis of that by political scientists is that it is a good deliberative democracy model which is not unique to Ireland but has worked extremely well in making sure there is broad consultation, quite apart from the broad democratic legitimacy of the people engaged in that work at every level. I find the Senator's approach to the notion of the Government trying to pull the wool over people's eyes, in those circumstances, curious.

Rónán Mullen (Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I make no apologies to my friend, the Minister of State, for choosing my own forum in which to ventilate the major problems with what the Government is doing by twisting gender and gender identity.It has the HSE pretending that men can have babies and breast-feed. It leads to the erasure of women as men with dysphoria lay claim to women's spaces.

In our playschools and schools, the normal securing of children's certainty of their personal identity at an early age could be turned upside down. They are being told fairy tales. I recently heard about a school in Galway where a teacher invited the children to state which gender identity they had. Introducing this confusion into children's lives is not what the Government should be doing or supporting. The Minister of State cannot hide behind the fact that she is not happy that I was not present to debate in the forum she chose, when I have chosen my own forums very frequently and repeatedly. Considering that people like Senator Keogan were kept off the gender committee, it is ironic indeed. The fact is that there is a problem. There are children with gender dysphoria, not trans children. We have got to deal with that problem in a way that does not turn reality on its head but deals with the crisis of dysphoria. When you hear the worries of people like Professor Donal O'Shea, you realise it is very clear that the Government is on board with a radical agenda, has not been up-front with the Irish people and will get increasing pushback. It has major implications for what the Government proposes to do in any referendum that tampers with the meaning of gender.

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

No. It is very clear that this is going to be the Senator's approach to a referendum about removing the reference to women's place being in the home and about trying to create a principle of non-discrimination. I can see where this is going. It is fine that the Senator chooses his forum, but I do not need his apologies and have never asked for them. I do not question his forum; I simply question his consistency.

Rónán Mullen (Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State just could not answer my argument; that is her problem.

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I simply question his consistency. On this notion that men are laying claim to women's places, which I have heard time and again, I am a woman and have worked for women's issues on a range of different issues.

Rónán Mullen (Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Some women are horrified with the approach the Minister of State-----

Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Senator, the Minister of State should be allowed to contribute without interruption.

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I have worked for women's protection across a range of issues, including gender violence and domestic violence. I have read into the records of the Dáil, Seanad and committees the names of every woman murdered since 1997 in different circumstances. Women's Aid-----

Rónán Mullen (Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Congratulations on your good work.

Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State should be allowed to contribute without interruption.

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I assure the Senator that since the gender recognition change in 2015, neither I nor any woman with whom I am personally acquainted has raised the spectre or fact of men coming into women's places in order to attack them. My constituents have not raised it with me either. I assure the Senator that in any circumstances where a man actually wishes to attack a woman, he does not need to dress up as a woman to do that. Men are perfectly capable of doing it, as is evidenced by the number of women who have been killed in their own homes by men they know in these circumstances. The Senator is conflating issues incorrectly.

Rónán Mullen (Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

No argument.

Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The Minister, without interruption.

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The Senator should not tell me about protecting women.

Rónán Mullen (Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State should be consistent, then, and not damage women's issues and interests-----

Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The Senator has had his one minute and the Minister of State replied. I asked him not to interrupt her when she was speaking. I thank the Minister of for being present.