Why I won't be voting PD/FF - A GLB perspective

LegacyUser

Some months ago, following the defeat of the Civil Unions Bill 2006 I penned the following letter. I have not received a response.

I will not be voting for the FF/PD alliance - in fact I will be voting against them. Others of a GLB disposition may wish to consider similar action.

Some months ago, following the defeat of the Civil Unions Bill 2006, I penned the following letter. I have not received a response.

I will not be voting for the FF/PD alliance tomorrow - in fact I will be voting against them. Others of a GLB disposition may wish to consider similar action.

Mr. Michael McDowell
The Minister's Office
Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform
94 St. Stephens Green
Dublin 2


Dear Mr McDowell

I refer to your response to the Civil Unions Bill 2006 (Private Members Bill) and in particular your Dail Speech on 22nd Feb and your subsequent piece in the Irish Times.

Your carefully researched and impeccably worded speech is a brilliant analysis of the situation. It rigorously scrutinises many aspects of the matter, mentions many of the issues and difficulties that need to be addressed, and indicates to us all once again your mastery of your brief and your blinding brilliance in your role as an academic observer of Irish life. Oh sorry, I forgot, your role isn't that of academic observer of Irish life - your role is that of Minister for Justice. Your job is to not to simply analyse and postulate and formulate conclusions like some verbose opposition windbag. Your job is to deliver working solutions to real life problems. And unfortunately your brilliant response in the Dail stops well short of doing anything to solve the problem that you so clearly and comprehensively understand. In this piece you make no commitment regarding the solution that will ultimately be delivered and you give no timeline for its delivery.

Maire Geoghan Quinn undoubtedly had the intellectual capacity and the plurality of speech writers available to her to generate pages of this analytical drivel when as Minister for Justice she inherited the European Court of Human Rights ruling (which Flynn, Burke and Collins, her 3 predecessors, had failed to address) Instead of sitting on her hands and bemoaning the complexity of the situation and the practical difficulties and so on she delivered the simple and workable solution that is the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act, 1993. She allowed no suggestion of an Irish solution to an Irish problem; instead she faced up to her responsibilities as Minister for Justice and, in decriminalising homosexual acts between consenting adults, delivered a solution to a problem that impacted on the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens. And its not as if she had it easy, she delivered on this while a member of Fianna Fail and during the days when the conservative Country & Western set were at their zenith.

Whilst unfortunately this country has no great record of making use of Private Members Bills for anything other than opposition grandstanding, and while there may have been an element of opportunism on the part of Brendan Howlin both in the timing and construct of the bill, you could simply and effectively have trumped that move by moving the bill on to Committee Stage and then replaced its entire content by amendment with the contents of the Law Reform Commission's Draft Cohabitants Bill 2006.

Instead, by deferring this bill for 6 months, you have killed it stone dead. (As you will know all Bills die with the Dail, and this Dail dies within 6 months). And you have given no indication whatsoever of when we can expect your solution to be promulgated, much less enacted. It seems to me that the PDs under McDowell amount to a lot of hot air; fulsome with talk but very poor when it comes to delivery of key social legislation.

* Labour & Fianna Fail lifted the restrictions on the sale of condoms.
* Maire Geoghan Quinn led Labour & Fianna Fail to decriminalised homosexual activity
* FG/Lab/WP carried off the divorce referendum

What, if anything, are the PDs capable of delivering under McDowell ?

It is of particular concern that you refer to the Zappone case. David Norris, with the support of Mary Robinson, took his High Court case in 1997. This was followed by his appeal to the Supreme Court in 1983 and his European Court of Human Rights case in 1988. The favourable judgement he finally received from the latter ultimately resulted in the 1993 Act. That took 16 years to achieve a change, and would have taken a lot longer had it not been for Maire Geoghan Quinn. And the State opposed him the whole way. Are we going to have a repeat of this with the Zapone case, which you so willing use as a crutch on the one hand but oppose with the full force of the State on the other? Are we going to endure the delays and embarrassment of seeing this issue dragged around Europe in order to get fair and just treatment?

The blunt reality is that your inaction further delays for me and my partner a satisfactory and equitable legal and financial context for our relationship. For example, it my partner were to be hospitalised tomorrow, I have no legal visitation rights whatsoever. For example if I died tomorrow the current inheritance tax regime would penalise my partner to the tune of over €400,000 in inheritance tax. And there is nothing that we can do about this other wait in the long grass over the coming months to let Mssrs Martin, McGrath, Dennehy and Minihan have it in the neck when they come vote hunting.

Would you ever just get on with it, spare us the hand wringing and the flights of academic brilliance and deliver a working solution that makes a difference to the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens.

Yours faithfully