I often wonder why are we having these statements on Pride? I reflect in many ways on my own political journey and I remember that, as a student and young person, I saw Máire Geoghegan-Quinn decriminalise homosexuality. As someone who was very closeted at the time, that had a big impact on me in terms of challenging my own thinking. My experience, even though I never hid my sexuality, was that I ended up being outed by the media in 2006. What struck home to me about that was the support I got from family, friends and my local community. I knew the real Ireland that existed then. In 2012, at the Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis, we became the second party to support marriage equality and, interestingly, the first to support same-sex adoption at the time. There was the joyous occasion of the marriage equality referendum in 2015. Now, we have a cross-party equality caucus here in Leinster House. I pay tribute to the leadership of the Minister of State, Deputy Buttimer, in that regard. In many ways, it is now unremarkable that we have so many Members of these Houses who identify as LGBT or as allies and no one really passes many remarks on it. I also see this in my local community, in the likes of The Vault youth centre in Arklow, the Gorey Youth Needs group and FDYS in Gorey, all of which have LGBT support groups. I pay particular tribute to Creagh College, which has done an incredible amount of work with the LGBTQ allies' support group in the school. The school has now achieved the Belong To quality mark. Incredible work has been done by the teachers and students to ensure the school is an inclusive environment. So many schools are doing that. I was at Gorey Library this week where, flying proudly outside the library, as indeed it is outside many libraries, is the Pride flag. It has a lot of books celebrating that and ensuring our libraries are inclusive spaces. When I look at all that progress I wonder if we still need to discuss and raise these issues. I am certain, even hearing some of the comments in the House today, that we do. I have no intention of pulling up the ladder on my trans brothers and sisters. We still have a long way to go, particularly in areas like trans healthcare. There is a responsibility on those who have been on our own journey to be supportive of those who still feel that the State is not recognising their needs or being sufficiently supportive. Reference has been made to social media. I am deeply concerned about Facebook. Meta is not taking sufficient action. Facebook used to be very much a community space for those who identified as LGBT to be able to come together. We are now seeing hate, particularly homophobia, discrimination and racism, being amplified. In the last year or two, in every single case where I have reported hate as being against the community guidelines that are set out, Facebook is upholding the content. There has to be a challenge made to Meta. If Facebook is taking part in the Pride parade in Dublin this weekend, it needs to look at itself and ask what it is doing as a company to be able to tackle this. Facebook, which was always an inclusive and welcoming space, has now gone nearly as bad as X in terms of fostering division and hatred. While we are fortunate in this country that we have come so far, we need to look at what continues to go on around the world. It is abhorrent that there are still countries where same-sex relations are illegal, even where there is an assumption that one has a same-sex attraction. Not only that but there are also countries where same-sex relations remain punishable by death. We have a moral obligation to continue to call out those countries. They include Brunei, Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and other parts of the world, including a number of regions in Nigeria where Sharia law is implemented. With regard to our foreign policy, I commend the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. When it comes to making decisions on overseas development aid, we should include a requirement that citizens are respected, regardless of who they love or are purported to love. The European Union must be a union of values as well as interests. I certainly believe that we are now seeing progress in Hungary where we had seen a lot of discrimination against members of the LGBT community. For countries on the accession pathway, these values also need to be very clearly communicated. I welcome that the Pride parade in Kyiv last weekend was ten times larger than normal. There is in Ukraine a recognition that the country needs to adhere to the value of inclusiveness. As others have said, this is a republic and we are judged by how we treat all of our citizens. For those who are LGBTQ, identify as LGBTQ or are our allies, I say "Happy Pride".

Sentiment score: 0.20