Debate contribution: Conversion Practices (Criminalisation) Bill: Second Stage

Debate contribution by Miss Deirdre Hargey on 15 September 2026.

MLA: Miss Deirdre Hargey
Party at the time: Sinn Féin
Date: 15 September 2026
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Private Members' Business
Heading: Conversion Practices (Criminalisation) Bill: Second Stage
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5706600

Text

This is an important issue of personal dignity and equality and the urgent, undeniable need to completely ban the cruel, discredited and deeply harmful practice known as conversion therapy. Conversion therapy is an archaic practice rooted in intolerance in the absence of any medical or scientific evidence. That is precisely why it is so dangerous. It is also why, across these islands and internationally, there are moves to ban it. I thank Eóin Tennyson for bringing forward this Member's Bill. Sinn Féin has been working and leading with others to bring forward legislation in this area, and we will engage constructively with the Member's Bill in order to ensure that it is fit for purpose and has the protections and human rights standards that are needed. Our message to the LGBTQ+ community across this island has always been absolute: you do not need to be fixed, because you are not broken. Yet, for far too long, vulnerable individuals, particularly young people, have been subjected to pseudopsychological and coercive practices and control designed to change, suppress or erase who they are. The Bill is about correcting that. These practices are not therapies but a form of emotional trauma, a violation of basic human rights and an archaic relic of bigotry that has no place in a modern and compassionate society. The days of calling our LGBTQ+ community an abomination are over, and so too should be the days of harmful conversion practices. Our commitment to ending that abuse is not new and is a matter of record. When Sinn Féin held the Department for Communities portfolio, we did not sit on our hands. Indeed, in 2020, when the Department of Health stalled on the issue, it was our then Minister, Carál Ní Chuilín, who proactively stepped forward and committed her Department at that time to taking the official policy lead on developing a ban. We carried that momentum forward and declared these practices to be cruel and inhumane.
In my capacity in the Department, I directed DFC officials to begin the rigorous work necessary to draft a legislative ban. That included research that would create a baseline to establish the impact of these practices. That was important for drafting any legislation that would come. The research included hearing the lived experiences of those who had been impacted by those practices, and the proposer touched on those lived experiences in his consultation process. That is why the research was developed with direct engagement with the LGBTQ+ community alongside academic experts at Queen's University and Ulster University.
That brings us to the present. We have the opportunity to progress that important work. We welcome the Bill because it aims to tackle the harms of conversion practices. It sets clear criminal thresholds for those who attempt to suppress or change an individual's sexual orientation or gender identity through coercive behaviour. Let us be clear: the Bill is not about targeting family conversations or legitimate healthcare; it is about preventing harm and targeting coercion.
It explicitly includes a defence of reasonableness — I will give way in two minutes — to prevent unintended criminalisation, and we recognise that this is a complex area to legislate in.

531 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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