Ciaran Cuffe admits to inequality in Civil Partnership Bill

In what is a remarkably frank and often argumentative exchange, Cuffe is also extremely critical of his Fianna Fail government colleagues, describing those he is dealing with across the table in discussions about issues like the Civil Partnership Bill as "gobshites" – and acknowledges that the Greens need to be "more strident about what our vision is."

Cuffe also admits that Catholic values are preventing equality in the recently-published Civil Partnership Bill. However, he insists that this influence will diminish when the Dublin Diocese Report on child sex abuse comes out.

When interviewer Dermod Moore puts it to Cuffe that Catholic values are what are preventing equality in this Bill, Cuffe replies, “I agree”. He later adds “I think the Irish people are still working their way through the Ryan Report, and there will be an opportunity when the Dublin Diocese report comes out, I think the anger will become a little bit directed, and we will see the opportunity to move the church away from a lot more from where its tendrils are in, a lot more in Ireland.”

Cuffe explains that while serving on an All-Party Oireachtas Group on the Constitution “it became very clear that there is a very conservative streak in the Oireachtas. It came down at one stage in a discussion about the very early part of the constitution, which talks about the family, the protection of the family based on marriage.”

In that context, Cuffe says “I regard it as a pretty good day to get the Civil Partnership Bill published, and hopefully get enacted within the next six months.” He also tells Hot Press, “I do think it’s a major step on the road to full equality. In some States it’s taken 25 years to go from Civil Partnership to marriage, in some countries they’ve gone all the way to full marriage almost overnight, as they did in Spain”.

Admitting that the Green Party website has received critical e-mails about their role in the Bill, Cuff admits “There’s been a dozen, half a dozen vitriolic emails saying ‘how dare you say that this is a step forward’”.

"It is an extraordinary conversation," Hot Press editor Niall Stokes says. "There is a level of anger and vitrfiol in what Ciaran Cuffe has to say that is most unusual in a serving member of the Dáil. It will be very interesting to see what the public reaction is because it is quite unlike any other interview with a politician I've ever read. Ciaran Cuffe's candour is to be admired, but a lot of people may find the insight the interview offers into the legislative process, and the extent to which tedium triumphs over vision in Leinster House, deeply disturbing."

To read the full, passionate ? and highly argumentative ? exchange between Ciaran Cuffe TD and Dermod Moore, pick up a copy of the new issue of Hot Press, with U2 on the front. It's in all good newsagents now.