Debate contribution: Conversion Practices (Criminalisation) Bill: Second Stage
Debate contribution by Mr Eóin Tennyson on .
- MLA
- Mr Eóin Tennyson
- Party at the time
- Alliance Party
- Date
- 15 September 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Private Members' Business
- Heading
- Conversion Practices (Criminalisation) Bill: Second Stage
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5707146
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I thank the Member for giving way. We are at risk of straying into reductio ad absurdum at this point of the debate. The simple fact that someone is a football coach does not mean that, if they had a conversation about sexuality or gender, they would be found guilty of coaching or instructing an individual as part of conversion therapy. However, the Member raises a concern that I have heard before, which is about how the Bill intersects with the Supreme Court judgement around access to single-sex spaces and the debate around gender recognition. The answer is that it does not. It does not afford transgender people any additional rights. It does not change their status in law. It simply says that people must not be exposed to a conversion therapy or a course of coercive behaviour that results in harm to those individuals. Those considerations are therefore really not relevant at all when it comes to what we are debating.
162 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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