Sir, – The debate so far has seen vast swathes of the public telling pollsters that they favour a Yes vote, while at the same time displaying an extraordinary reluctance to engage on the issue in any way. This, in turn, allows a small but vocal group to monopolise the campaign for a Yes vote.
The most extraordinary example of this was the Dáil debate on the Bill to call the referendum. Incredibly, despite the enormous significance of the proposed referendum, just 28 of our 166 TDs spoke in the debate, including just nine of Fine Gael’s 49 backbench TDs. The vast majority of the largest party in the Dáil – and of the Dáil itself – maintained a stony silence as the Bill was passed without a vote, let alone any kind of meaningful legislative scrutiny. The debate concluded with a comical exchange between Clare Daly TD and the leas ceann chomhairle Michael Kitt, both of whom seemed baffled that so much time was left over as a result of so few TDs having sought to speak.
Love them or loathe them, our TDs are certainly well aware of public opinion on any given issue. If a particular cause is popular in their constituencies, they generally clamour over each other to be associated with it. So how should we interpret the fact that so few of them wanted to speak on the issue of same-sex marriage, let alone publicly support it?
Actions may speak louder than words, but the silence of a vast swathe of political and public opinion must surely be a cause of extreme concern to the Yes campaign. – Yours, etc,
THOMAS RYAN ,
Dublin 6W.
A chara, – Pádraig McCarthy (April 3rd) gets precisely to the heart of the marriage referendum – how LGBT people are perceived. Pádraig's description of our relationships ("biological and human differences") highlights exactly the problem that LGBT people face every day in Ireland – we are seen as different, separate, distinct. Not the same, not included, not part of the gang. He talks of wanting to "honour the distinctiveness of each kind of relationship". I for one am tired of being considered only in respect of how I am "different" or "distinct". Can Pádraig and others not see that I'm just another human being trying to live a normal, ordinary life in this country? We are all different in a million ways. Let's start focusing on our common human similarities instead and we might have a much happier society. – Is mise,
JULIE REYNOLDS,
Dublin 15.