Conor Sheehan
Limerick City · Labour Party · Ireland
“If a student does not have access to one of these devices or access to one at home, there is often no alternative and that could leave them excluded. Many families are forced to pay hundreds and thousands, particularly with the rising cost of microchips, for these devices.”
“I thank the Minister for her considered response. We need to get rid of voluntary contributions and move to generic school uniforms. This is something that has been done in the UK.”
“This digital divide is resulting in a severe and growing level of inequality where so many communities, students and families are unable to purchase the devices they desperately need for their children's education.”
“I raise the issue of the community access support team, CAST, in Limerick, which has prevented 133 detentions under section 12 of the Mental Health Act and reduced the number emergency department presentations. It has responded to over 1,000 incidents.”
“Do not worry. We need to have a debate this week before the House rises about the imminent report on Aughinish Alumina. There are up to 2,000 direct and indirect jobs at stake in Limerick. We cannot have a situation where the State is inadvertently complicit in the export of alumina to Russia. Where there is a will, there is a way.”
“It is absolutely reprehensible that planning permission has been granted for apartments on the site of the former mother and baby home at Bessborough. We have 19 mothers and 859 infants associated with Bessborough still missing. Now 140 apartments are going to be built on a mass grave. We need statements on this next week.”
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“Having gone there for Hallowe'en last year, I really encourage anybody who has not been to Derry to visit it. In addition, the Causeway Coastal Route is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Let us imagine the nation we could build if we could marry the beauty and wonder of those places with that of places like Cork, Limerick, Galway, Clare and the Wild Atlantic Way. I have a special affinity to Derry because I think it has much in common with Limerick city, which I represent. Both places have suffered from stigma, stereotyping and violence. Both are built around huge, sweeping rivers. I have seen how both cities have come on so much. They are now beautiful, vibrant and edgy places with so much heart and soul. Our Republic is unfinished because of partition. It is an arbitrary, artificial and crude separation of a people.”
“We need to get on with the groundwork and build the legal frameworks for a referendum. We must lay the foundations for an Ireland free from poverty and homelessness and rooted in equality for everyone regardless of who they are and where they come from. As a proud Irish republican and a united Irelander, I believe change is within our grasp. Many people thought we would never achieve peace on this island. We have done that. As somebody who regularly visits the North, I think Belfast is a fantastic city, whether it is the beauty of the Botanic Gardens or the vibrant atmosphere of the Cathedral Quarter. Equally, Derry is a fantastic place, especially at Hallowe'en. In fact, it has the largest Hallowe'en festival in Europe and was voted by USA Today as the best Hallowe'en destination in the world.”
“The NHS model in the North could be combined with the best of Sláintecare. We need an all-Ireland housing strategy that treats shelter as a fundamental human right. We need strong statutory protections for workers' rights, collective bargaining and fair wages across both jurisdictions. We need a real plan for regional development. We cannot have a situation where investment gets sucked into Dublin and Belfast. Places like Limerick, Derry, Cork and Galway must feel the benefit of such investment. The process must be inclusive. A new Ireland cannot simply be based on a sectarian headcount that isolates or alienates the unionist community. It must be built on the principle of an agreed Ireland in which all identities, traditions and minorities are welcomed and valued.”
“This Bill is a step in the right direction but we need to plan in an orderly, inclusive and democratic manner for constitutional change. It cannot just be about swapping flags and moving border posts. We must plan for a new and agreed Ireland that delivers a better quality of life for us all. I have in mind the famous statement by John Hume about the will of the Northern majority and the need for a new Ireland built on the principle of consent. If we are going to write Green Papers and convene citizens' assemblies, they cannot become abstract talking shops. We must address the material realities of working-class people North and South. A truly united Ireland must mean the best of both jurisdictions. We need a unified universal healthcare system that is free at the point of delivery.”
“I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. I sincerely commend the Taoiseach and Government on the shared island initiative. It is important and cannot be understated. It involves €1 billion of capital funding and includes important projects such as the Narrow Water bridge and the new Enterprise fleet. I commend the work the Minister of State, Deputy Feighan, has done over many years, what I call the quiet work of diplomacy and dialogue in terms of British-Irish relations. I fully support the Bill. The future of this island must be built on the bedrock of the Good Friday Agreement, on consent and on respect for diversity. I welcome the debate on constitutional change. In fact, we have already called for a timeline for a referendum.”
“I want to see a step change and a culture shift whereby we create a system in which women have confidence that they will be listened to and believed and that their perpetrator will be brought to justice.”
“I am also concerned that for victims and survivors of domestic violence who are leaving their home or moving county, the protocols brought forward by the Minister for housing last week do not currently cover those who are in receipt of HAP and RAS. That is something the Government needs to look at and rectify. On many metrics, things are getting worse. We have an epidemic of male violence against women in this country. We have an epidemic of misogyny. Victims need to feel they have the confidence in the system to come forward such that they know their case will be prosecuted and investigated properly and they will get the justice they deserve. The number of failed prosecutions for rape in this country leaves an awful lot to be desired.”
“If a woman is raped in Limerick or the mid-west, including Clare, Tipperary and down as far as west Clare, unless the woman is willing to report the incident to the Garda, which can be more traumatising for that individual, she has to travel, often on public transport, in the clothes she was wearing and with the DNA and the semen of her attacker, to Galway in order to get a fulsome examination and an STI check. While it is welcome that we are debating this motion tonight, we need to go much further. We need 500 refuge spaces and we need to make sure the Government meets the target by the end of 2026, as was set out by Cuan.”
“She said very pertinently that it is not the man under the bed you need to worry about, but the man sleeping beside you in the bed, whether it be your husband or partner. Last week, shockingly, 1,900 women were turned away from refuge places. That is why I called for the Minister for justice to come into the Chamber last week and take questions on this. In many counties we are failing women. In my own County Limerick, we do not have a sexual assault treatment unit.”
“What terrifies me is that the number of women killed violently so far this year matches the total figure for 2025. We still have nine counties with no refuge. We know the Government is unlikely to meet the target of doubling refuge spaces by the end of 2026. We had 141 at the start; we are now in June and have 193. We have had 285 women die violently in this country since 1996. So far this year, a number of women have died violently. Adina Constantin, Yveta Donovalova, Kelly Marie Lynch, Amy Doherty and Ellie Flanagan have all died violently in this country. Some 50% of all victims are under the age of 35, while 63% were killed at home, 87% by a man who was known to them. When I talk about domestic and gender-based violence, I always think of the former State pathologist, Dr. Marie Cassidy.”
“There were 22,700 contacts to the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre's national helpline in 2024, there were 32,144 contacts to Women's Aid in the same year and gardaí responded to an average of 1,250 incidents per week. While the zero-tolerance strategy commits to doubling the number of refuge spaces in the country by the end of 2026 - and that was a welcome step - the ambition falls far short of what is needed. The Government strategy to double provision to 282 places is based on one unit per 10,000 women, rather than one place per 10,000 population. Article 23 of the Istanbul Convention sets out a clear requirement to provide an adequate ratio of shelter places to the total population. That means Ireland would still need another 250 places to be compliant. All the while, our population continues to grow.”
“We support the motion. Gender-based and domestic violence is a problem across Europe and it is welcome that the EU is taking seriously its role in tackling the issue by signing the Istanbul Convention. Ireland is already a state party to the convention but opting in in full to the EU's ratification process will mean we can play a full part in the Europe-wide fight against gender-based violence. That will be particularly important in light of the EU Presidency. It is welcome the Government is taking this step. It is important but we need far greater action from Government on tackling violence against women and girls and domestic violence. When it comes to domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, the scale of the challenge we face is clear. The figures are stark.”
“In the first instance, the Government needs to look at the equity element of the CREL to make sure more cost-rental developments do not end up being pulled. As I said, I will engage constructively with this Bill. Where there are measures in it that I believe will accelerate housing delivery, while protecting the integrity of proper planning, I will support them. However, where the Government seeks to weaken safeguards, reduce standards and continues to not address the real barriers to housing delivery, then I will continue to challenge that.”
“In some of the time available to me, I want to talk about the issues with the cost rental equity loan, CREL, scheme. I have had a decent bit of engagement with the AHB sector, as I am sure the Department has, around the 40-year repayment period. Due to soaring construction costs, many in the AHB sector are saying that this is making cost rental unviable for them. We have AHBs that are pulling the plug on cost-rental developments because the are saying they are not viable. However, at the same time, the way the cost-rental system was designed here means that it is not proper cost rental; it is market discount. We now have a situation where rents in the cost-rental sector are far too high. Yes, they are 29% lower, on average, than on the open market but they are still too high and they need to come down.”
“We have already paid the price for poor planning decisions in relation to apartments, when we consider that virtually everything built during the Celtic-tiger period is in some way defective. Every apartment built today should be a home that somebody can comfortably live in permanently. We, in Labour, have consistently argued that once again, the State must become a major builder of housing. We cannot continue to rely on a volatile private market to solve a crisis that the market itself has failed repeatedly to solve. We need to empower local authorities more. We need to better support the AHB sector, and I will go into that. We also need to look at establishing a State construction company. We need to invest more in modern methods of construction. We need a stable, predictable and properly resourced planning system.”
“It is also the second time we have done it in the past year. I would argue that it does not go far enough and that the State needs to invest more in the direct delivery of social and affordable housing. Given that we only extended the borrowing cap in quarter 4 of last year, I would like the Government to take a longer-term review of the remit of the HFA and its borrowing ceiling and to look at the borrowing cap of all 31 local authorities, which is far too low. As I said, I support efficient planning. I do not think anybody benefits from unnecessary delay but we must have proper planning and that is a fact. I cannot support apartment changes that make developments cheaper by making homes smaller and reducing amenities and design standards.”
“The fact remains that a significant majority of council planning positions approved over the past two years remain unfilled due to a lack of available graduates and retention issues due to the fact that, in many cases, the local government sector cannot compete with the private sector on salaries. I have concerns about potential bottlenecks around the fact that a local development plan cannot be finalised until the regional spatial and economic strategy, RSES is complete. There is a 90-week deadline on regional reviews. I hope there is not any delay at regional assembly level because that will set off a domino effect for local authorities. I want to talk about section 149, which has to do with the increase in the Housing Finance Agency, HFA, borrowing limit. I have no issue with this; I support it.”
“I raise this because I have asked a number of parliamentary questions about planning posts. I cannot find out from the Department how these posts will be back-filled. The Department cannot tell me the workforce data for the local government planning sector because of section 159. It cannot tell me the percentage of current or senior executive planners who are eligible for retirement. When we look at the action plan on planning resources, the LGMA said a number of years ago that it needed 541 planning posts. Two hundred and forty four were sanctioned, which is not even half. When we look at phase 1 in 2023, that is fine but phase 2 did not actually come until 2025.”
“I want to move on and talk about planning in terms of planning posts and resourcing our local authorities. I would argue there are potential resourcing issues here because moving the goalposts for plan review simultaneously across multiple local authorities is logistically very complex. Through the CCMA, local authorities have voiced concern over the severe shortage of qualified planners to meet these compressed transitional deadlines. Replies to parliamentary questions I have received in recent months tell me that a fairly significant number of planners who have been reassigned to, or have been recruited from local authorities by, An Coimisiúin Pleanála. We need clarity from the Department as to how these critical vacancies will be back-filled at local authority level.”
“The Government's constant changing of legal mechanisms to bypass court challenges has created massive regulatory uncertainty and delays in apartment delivery. I also want to talk about sections 21 and 42, which refer to adjusting the time for local authority development plan reviews and outline what will occur when elected officials fail to make a plan. The shift from six-year to ten-year development plans is a good idea but it is complex. This Bill allows current local development plans, made under the 2000 Act, to remain legally active on a transitional basis. I have concerns here regarding local government and the role of councillors. Handing ultimate power to central government, if councillors fail to make a plan, is again reducing the power and democratic influence of locally-elected representatives over zoning decisions.”
“I also have a concern about the erosion of democratic oversight. By classifying these structural reductions as non-material modifications that only require a local authority certificate, the law effectively locks out the public. Neighbours and community groups have no right to review, object to or appeal these down-sized designs. These were, of course, rammed through. By eliminating minimum or maximum requirements for specific bedroom mixes, this policy actively incentivises a monoculture of small studio and one-bed units, again pushing families out of urban cores. The State committed a severe error by failing to conduct a strategic environmental assessment before introducing these lowered guidelines.”
“Data from the Law Society shows that the number of judicial reviews brought by individual citizens was already falling while the number of cases taken by commercial developers was increasing. I have concerns about the new section 138A, to be inserted in the principal Act by section 62, which deals with the relaxation of apartment standards. I fundamentally believe it is a race to the bottom to allow developers to shrink floor sizes, lower ceilings and reduce natural light. In effect, this is calling for smaller and darker apartments. I am concerned as well that these new lower standard apartments will disproportionately affect social housing tenants and renters, who are transient dwellers, by locking them into long-term inferior living conditions while developers maximise their profits.”
“My concern is that instead of speeding up infrastructure delivery, which is the intention, we could end up with a wave of satellite litigation and spend years in court arguing over procedural technicalities. There are other aspects of this that are concerning. The whole idea of forcing courts, in effect, to police the corporate governance rules for volunteer-led community groups is a bit strange. The notion of shifting the responsibility of micromanaging community group governance to the courts system, thereby consuming valuable judicial time, does not make sense. The Government would have us believe planning is the principal obstacle to housing delivery, but it is not. Blaming judicial review for housing backlogs is a distraction.”
“If the Government really wants to reduce delays, it must properly resource the courts and ensure planning authorities have adequate staffing - I will say more about that presently - to improve the quality of decision-making in the first place. Codifying the restrictions placed on public participation and potentially breaching our international legal obligations under the Aarhus Convention is not a road I want us to go down. The convention provides that environmental judicial reviews must not be prohibitively expensive or overtly restrictive. I have concerns that the stricter limits being placed on judicial review could breach that requirement. There is also a risk that removing the automatic right of appeal to the Court of Appeal, leaving only redress to the Supreme Court, could be unconstitutional.”
“The Government would have us believe the planning system and judicial reviews are the biggest obstacles to housing delivery. That is not true. In fact, the biggest obstacles remain a lack of serviced land, inadequate infrastructure, soaring construction costs, labour shortages and the chopping and changing of Government policy. I support efficient planning. Nobody benefits from unnecessary delay. However, achieving greater speed cannot become an excuse for weakening transparency, accountability or access to justice. The proposed judicial review changes are troublesome. Judicial review exists for a reason. It is not there to frustrate development. It is there primarily to ensure public bodies follow the law.”
“This Bill, which has 149 sections, is being rushed through the Dáil two weeks before the recess. I have been a TD for only a year and a half and this is the second time I have debated one of these amending planning and development Bills. I was not a Member of the previous Dáil but I was told that the huge 2024 planning Bill, which had 900-odd pages, was a panacea and that we would not need to revisit these issues. The Planning and Development Act 2000 was fundamentally good legislation. The issue was all the amendments that followed, which turned it into a unwieldy dog's dinner of an Act. I have a number of concerns about the Bill before us today, mainly relating to section 115, which inserts a new section 303A into the principal Act. These provisions deal with the judicial review changes.”
“Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit as a bheith anseo inniu. I thank him and his officials for the detailed briefing we received on the Bill. It is a long and technical Bill. One aspect of it is that it seeks to raise the borrowing limit of the Housing Finance Agency, which is fine. However, the other aspects are quite technical and detailed. Deputy Ó Broin alluded to a recurring theme across Departments, not just the Department of housing, whereby the deadline for Committee Stage amendments to Bills is given before the Second Stage debate. I do not appreciate that and it does not set a good precedent. In many cases, Second Stage allows us to tease out queries, issues or concerns and have the Government respond to them. It allows us time to consider what amendments we might table.”
“The Select Committee on Enterprise, Tourism and Employment has completed its consideration of the Industrial Development (Amendment) and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill 2026 and has made no amendments thereto.”
“Today nurses and midwives are protesting at University Maternity Hospital Limerick. The HSE pay and numbers strategy cut approximately 30 to 35 front-line nursing and midwifery posts, imposing new staff ceilings, recruitment limits and pay spend caps. Many areas of the hospital are running rosters at 50% below safe levels. The neonatal unit is beyond safe capacity while awaiting HSE approval for service expansion. The labour ward has a daily deficit of midwives. This has been raised repeatedly with management. A HIQA review found the situation to be unsustainable. The HSE must uphold the agreement on staffing from 2015. The neonatal unit expansion must be funded. Safe staffing is needed and the hospital needs to be protected from the HSE pay and numbers strategy.”
“We have an epidemic of male violence against women in this country. Nearly 1,900 women were turned away from domestic violence refuges in the final six months of last year. The Government is failing these women. We need the Minister to come in and take questions on this issue this week. Women fleeing domestic violence need support and they need safe refuge.”
“No survivor should have to resort to dragging themselves through an adversarial court system to fight for their dignity. If an institution facilitated, enabled and covered up the horrific sexual abuse of children, that institution must pay what is owed. We have given the Minister of State a mechanism to act; please use it.”
“It is shocking that in 2026, mothers out there who are survivors of these institutions have no clue - and may never have a clue - where their dead children are buried. When survivors consistently seek answers about what happened, information remains unavailable and important questions remained unanswered. Apologies have been made, reports have been published and legislation has been introduced, but for many people time is running out. I note with deep disappointment the Minister of State's amendment providing for a six-month time delay, because some of these survivors may not have six months. The Bill my colleague has introduced provides the legal teeth to break through these trusts and recover the damage that is rightfully owed to survivors.”
“However, the State has effectively decided what that suffering is worth. The redress scheme tells its own story, with the arbitrary cut-offs and medical card eligibility issues once again reducing lifelong trauma and its consequences to a simple calculation of days. Recently, two survivors successfully challenged their exclusion from the redress scheme through the courts. The Government's response was not to accept these decisions; it was to appeal. Only weeks after the Minister stood in the Dáil and apologised to survivors, the State is once again forcing survivors through the courts. Survivors are looking for justice, for accountability and for religious orders to pay what they owe.”
“Instead of compassion, proper maternity care and support, women in Sean Ross Abbey experienced fear, humiliation and inadequate care. Women have spoken about being left in pain during childbirth and being told to offer up their suffering for their sins. Many mothers left these institutions without their babies. Many children grew up not knowing who they were, where they came from or why they had been separated from their mothers. This trauma did not end when the doors of these institutions closed because women and children continue to live with the physical and emotional consequences today, and many still require counselling and support decades later. No amount of money can compensate mothers and children for the trauma, abuse and lifelong consequences of what happened in mother and baby homes.”
“We cannot continue the same failed approach of asking religious orders to, effectively, appeal to their better nature. That approach has failed us for nearly 30 years. It is time for the State to force their hand. I want to read an excerpt from an email I received from a constituent of mine who is a survivor of Sean Ross Abbey, which outlines eloquently the core of the issue: If the State truly understood the lifelong damage caused to women and children by mother and baby homes, it would never have designed the redress scheme as it did. Women entered these institutions at one of the most vulnerable times in their lives, and many arrived frightened, alone and ashamed, often having already been rejected by their families and communities.”
“This is a masterclass in corporate evasion by institutions that claim they are Christian, but whose actions, in reality, are anything but. Culpable religious orders are actively dodging their responsibilities. They are using grubby, dirty, cynical legal tactics to place their vast wealth and considerable assets completely out of reach. They move properties and millions of euro into lay-run trusts, drawing a legal curtain between their riches and money, and the victims they broke, bruised and failed - vulnerable people who were, in many cases, in their care. The recent scoping inquiry noted "mixed engagement" from the orders on redress. In my view, "mixed" is a laughable term to use. It is almost a euphemism for literally whacking the door shut on survivors.”
“For decades, the State has grappled with the dark, painful and deeply stained legacy of institutional abuse. We have sat in this Chamber and listened to statements. We have listened to apologies and we have all read reports. We read the reports into the mother and baby homes. Some of us read the Ryan report. Time and again, we have seen brave courageous survivors stand up, recount their deepest traumas and ask this country to do one simple thing, which is to get them accountability. Yet, on many occasions they have been met with a State redress scheme that is cold, bureaucratic, adversarial and forces them to repeatedly prove they are not lying. If the State's failures are cause for deep concern, the utter moral bankruptcy of certain religious orders is worse. We need to call this out for what it is.”
“First of all, I thank my colleague and party leader, Deputy Bacik, for bringing this Bill forward. I also welcome the visitors to the Gallery. This Bill is timely for two reasons. It is timely because it addresses one of the most disgusting and hideous aspects of our shameful past, namely, the abuse perpetuated by religious orders and facilitated by the State. Many religious orders hold substantial wealth, particularly in terms of property and land, yet many refuse to engage and refuse to pay compensation for the horrendous damage they inflicted on poor innocent undeserving people. This Bill is also timely because in the week in which it has come up for debate, we have seen the conviction of two vile paedophiles who were two men in positions of authority and influence - Leo Hickey and Jeffrey Donaldson.”
“Children with additional needs are being failed in many ways, but to see a child unable to attend school for up to 18 months due to a lack of dentistry is beyond comprehension.”
“St. Vincent's special school in Lisnagry, County Limerick, has been without a routine dental service for months. It has been the bones of a year. The specialist dental post is still vacant. These are students who cannot tolerate routine dental examinations. There is a student who cannot attend school at the moment because she has large cavities in her back teeth, and she has to get these teeth removed. The waiting list for Nenagh is over a year. A lot of these children are on restricted diets. I have been in contact with the Minister's office about this. If this situation is not resolved, the child could miss up to 18 months at school. She is not the only child at St. Vincent's who currently has these issues.”
“To push back on that a bit, while cost-rental rents are somewhat lower, being on average about 30% lower than rents in the private rental market, they are still far too high. A market rent in Dublin of €2,300 still means €1,725 a month. Will the Minister consider the length of time AHBs have to repay the CREL loan? That will answer some of the issues they have. Furthermore, will he consider decoupling our cost-rental model from the open market down the line and tying it entirely to underlying financial costs of delivery by amending the 2021 Act? When building costs and long-term maintenance rise, rents set at 25% below market rate cannot generate enough revenue to cover the actual cost of housing. This has forced bodies to scrap projects.”
“They are saying they are struggling because of the requirement for the rent to sit 25% below the market rate, yet rents are already high enough and need to come down.”
“I thank the Minister for his response. There are a couple of questions I want to ask. Has the Minister any plans in relation to all the fragmented subsidies that exist, like those related to the secure tenancy affordable rental investment scheme, STAR, and cost-rental equity loan, CREL, and the local authority funds. Does he have any plans to merge these? I also want to ask about barriers to delivering cost rental at scale and whether consideration is being given to extending the repayment period of the CREL loan. This is something that has been raised with me by approved housing bodies, AHBs, because we have had incidents recently where some AHBs were pulling cost-rental developments.”
“What are the Minister’s plans to introduce measures to reduce cost-rental rents? Will he make a statement on this because cost-rental rents are too high and are locking thousands of people out of the rental market? The average rent for a three-bedroom house in Oscar Traynor Road is now €1,800. More and more applicants are being refused on affordability grounds. There are flaws in the model, which I will go into in my supplementary questions.”
“The reason I raised the issue of compulsory sale orders is that this is something the Scottish Government had in a 2018 land reform report, although it has not been implemented yet. I am raising it not so much with the idea that the compulsory sale order would be punitive, but for it to be another framework by which engagement can be sought with the owners of problematic sites. I have two follow-up questions. What is the rationale for the derelict property tax to be applied to towns with a population of over 4,000, given that we have significant issues with rural dereliction? When will we see the compulsory purchase order Bill?”
“I thank the Minister of State for his response. There is €20.5 million in levies outstanding for derelict sites. I want to press the Government on what new measures there are and what it is going to do to make sure that local authorities collect that money, notwithstanding the new derelict property tax. I will also ask about the compulsory purchase order Bill. The Law Reform Commission gave very clear recommendations in 2023. When are we going to see that Bill? Will the Minister of State confirm on the record that the derelict property tax will not be littered with exemptions? We have had cases before where measures like the derelict property tax were introduced, but they sound a lot better than they actually are because when they are finally introduced, they are littered with exemptions for this, that and the other.”
“I ask the Minister about the steps he and his Department will take to tackle dereliction in advance of the new derelict property tax and how he is going to mandate local authorities to collect the millions in outstanding derelict site levies in advance of that, and when the Government will introduce the new compulsory purchase order Bill. Will he examine the concept of compulsory sale orders to bring vacant and neglected homes back into use?”
“We need to move on trans healthcare. Thankfully, by having the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, in government, we actually have somebody who genuinely gets it and wants to make a difference and will make a difference. We need to make sure that all forms of homophobia, including transphobia and biphobia, are called out and that we have zero tolerance.”
“Furthermore, I look, for example, at Belong To and the work it has done, and the 87% of teenagers who have received online harassment for being LGBT. I can even look at my own social media. Any time I talk about any of these things, I get a plethora of stuff underneath the posts and, to be honest, it is horrible but it does not particularly bother me because I know there is some young boy or young girl out there in this country at the moment who probably thinks they are better off being dead than being LGBT. The fact of the matter is that while we have come so far, we have a much further journey to travel. We need to see the full commencement of the 2024 Act in relation to the issues around surrogacy. I have one friend who is a parent and is, effectively, legally a stranger in the lives of their children.”
“However, at the same time, the world is getting more dangerous for LGBT people, including here in Ireland. Homophobia is on the rise again. Transphobia is, unfortunately, becoming more and more normalised. It has even come into this House. It has crept in, in ways. People whom I would consider totally reasonable on loads of issues have said things on the record in this House, jollied up as concerns, that are, in effect, transphobic and dehumanising.”