Because domestic violence is'the great taboo' We men have to speak out loud and clear to say it is wrong. It's always wrong and can never be condoned or justified. It's past time we hear men speaking. Come on men...stand together with our women.

Long waiting list, lack of services and expert professionals are seriously harming the transgender community in Ireland, who are already among the most vulnerable community in Ireland. It is imperative to move from a psychiatric model of healthcare to a self-informed consent model. Within the current psychiatric model, people are having to wait long periods for a compulsory psychiatric evaluations before being able to access basic treatments such as hormone therapy. Long wait times are often traumatic and leave people with little options. In many cases people are therefore forced to seek treatment or surgery abroad. It is time that Ireland uses the WPATH model (World Professional Association for Transgender Health) and adopts a healthcare guideline inline with best practice.

Its extremely important that farmers take the time to sighn this petition , as I feel its the first step and only step in rectifying the great imbalances that farmers are experiencing, when we as independent farmers elect our own representative to hold position as minister for agriculture, then we as a farming community can work towards resolving farmers issues re instating farmers rights equality something that is being rashioned at present, we can resolve the great imbalances being experienced

My name is Laura Angela I’m the chairwoman for Justice for all women & children this year I accepted a Irish Traveller pride award in intersectionality in which was presented by the amazing Catherine cordless. It’s so important as my mother is a survivor of a abusive industrial school. While there she was abused over who she and her mother was and was made to hate her ethnicity and faced very traumatic experiences of abuse. Her mother Angelina was sent to a laundry for 27 years and was renamed Angela. While there she was recommended a hysterectomy by the doctors. Instead the order used her up until her dying day and ignored the doctors recommendations for over a decade after it was made. My nan died of ovarian cancer if given the treatment she needed she could be here to tell you her story. Instead she lays in a mass grave in cork with 72 other women in which I have been visiting since being a small child. Angelina had three daughters. Her eldest daughter Margaret was 14 when she was out into Sunday wells Magdalene laundry run by the good shepherds in cork. When she left she left for Liverpool. She returned to cork to find her mother and headed straight to St. Vincent’s the laundry her mum was in. She was told that she should leave and never come back. She returned to liverpool and that coming Christmas committed suicide on a day for family, Christmas Day. Angelina’s youngest daughter Bridget was adopted. For 5 years my nan was refusing to sign adoption papers for Bridget while in the laundry. It was only when they used my mum Mary who was in the industrial school and said if she signed the papers she would be given visits by Mary who was in the industrial school and was made to fear her mother. Knowing that not many got the opportunity to even see their children again she took the deal and signed the papers. From there from the age of seven onwards my mum mary was made to visit her mum in the Magdalene laundry but it wasn’t the first time she would have entered those doors. In the 1960s a commission called the commission of itinerancy was taking place. Traveller children was being taken from their family’s and put into industrial schools. The women & children was taken and forced to work in institutions while the aim was to isolate the men on the camps in attempt to eradicate the whole population. Figures called the “cruelty men”” would attend camps on the side of the road and conduct inspections. My nan was in Tuam when my nan took to the side of the road with her latter and travelled to Middleton. A cruelty man approached the site and did a inspection. Although in reports all her children was deemed well nourished and cared for, my Nan had been labelled a “itinerant” she lied regarding being married as her children was illegitimate. But she was put into a county home and was found to be lying. She then escaped the county home with my mum Mary aged two and half. She was brought back by Garda and in the reports she states she was trying to get back to her family in Tuam which mentioned the name Patrick ward within. They didn’t tend to write down the fathers name but because of her attempted escape it gave us some direction as then through DNA and research we found out my mums grandfather (the father to my mum dad) was called a Patrick ward. But from there my mum and her mother was sent to the laundry while they waited for the child’s placement, a nun remembers the night my mum mary was ripped from Angelina in the Magdalene laundry and she was bundled in the car in the car park of it. My mum has been through the Ryan report, mcayleese report and is now facing the mother and baby home commission. During the Ryan report they was just looking at the abuse within the industrial schools so although my mothers statement spoke of her being brought up to the laundry and her mother. This was excluded this as they was claiming at the time these institutions was private. During the mcayleese report they just acknowledged the living working residents and didn’t even provide a minutes silence on the night to the dead my mum sat in the Dàil heartbroken. This meant that child residents/ visitors and their dead mothers was excluded from gaining justice. After the 2013 apology to just the living working residents. We applied to cork council for the exhumation of my nan. We was sent a response letter in 2014 stating the requirements of we would need to bare all costs and we would also need the sisters of charity permission. We have wrote many letters. Had a solicitor write letters and they have never responded in regards to providing of their permission. I have written a book in regards to my mother’s and nan story called The Tinker Menace; The diary of an Irish Traveller which gives a detailed account of our journey and which in detail also lays bare the cover up around the institutions and the effects it had on my family. I am starting this petition to show the order and government how much public support is behind the removal process of my nan and to force them to both take action as they are both responsible. It really means a lot to move my nan and rebury her in a dignified site in which isn’t associated with all the traumatic feelings that arise for my mum when she attends the mass grave. I personally feel due to the fact their was another Magdalene mass grave at another site in which they opened as they sold the land and found more bodies without death certificates - no Garda investigation was put in place they simply put death certificates in place. I think they fear history repeating itself. Please sign and share our petition as far as possible together let’s give the freedom my nan always deserved finally back and some form of justice. Thank you all, for more information regarding the campaign please visit our page: https://www.facebook.com/Justice4AllWomenAndChildren/

Mike Pence presides over a cruel and inhuman system of detention at the US - Mexico border. He's also anti LGBTQIA+ rights and he supports conversion therapy for gay and bisexual people. As a country, we have a duty to say no to treating him as an official guest, as his politics flies in the face of everything we stand for. We certainly shouldn't roll out the red carpet for him to visit.

The “river god” statue chosen for Athlone misrepresents our native heritage and our rich culture. It would be an affront to our heritage and people to use colonial male object from Dublin to represent the Shannon and Athlone. The mythological Goddess Sionann, granddaughter of Lir, is our mythological river deity – not a concocted neo-classical god. Misappropriation of mythology and gender in a time of national subjugation is not acceptable as a modern representation of our town, nor is representation of the town on the backside of a statue. The concept of celebrating our river and our heritage is a welcome one and we call on the Council to do so by recognising our heritage – not replacing it. We call on Westmeath County Council to revoke its uninformed selection.

The Irish sex education curriculum needs to be objective, factual and inclusive and taught without the barrier of school ethos. Support the Oireachtas Education Committee and the National Council for Curriculum and Assessments recommendations to reform the current sex education curriculum. It is imperative that: - Young people grow up with the right information in order to make informed decisions about their own sexuality and relationships. - Young people grow up understanding consent, especially in the #MeToo era and at a time when there remains a high prevalence of sexual assault, harassment and violence. - Young people grow up inclusive of people's sexual orientation, gender identity and the spectrum thereof, at a time when LGBT students still face high amounts of homophobic and transphobic related bullying.

This year, Irish leaders will meet with GB and NI politicians to discuss power-sharing objectives for NI. We want our human rights to be at the top of their list. We ask the Government of Ireland to bring bodily autonomy to the table during their talks with the UK government, and to be a voice for their citizens resident in NI. Women in Northern Ireland are unrepresented. We are Irish citizens, living without the protection of the Irish government, and with no functioning government of our own to petition. We have fewer rights than our peers across the border. Currently, a woman or pregnant person in NI can face life imprisonment for procuring an abortion in their own jurisdiction. The result of this is that pregnant people are compelled to travel at cost for abortions, ensuring that our human rights are accessible on a socially and economically divisive basis. Women and pregnant people in the Republic of Ireland have been given the bodily autonomy we all deserve. Their efforts to obtain this basic human right were actively supported by the many NI women resident in the Republic, and by those resident in the North. We are owed the support of the Irish people and of the Irish government. It is reprehensible that we are still denied the fundamental human rights now ostensibly protected by the two governments who claim us as citizens or subjects. We insist upon our right to make choices about our bodies, and about our reproductive health without threat or fear of recrimination. We demand that our justice system not be commandeered to condemn women exercising their human right to bodily autonomy.

Ireland has changed, we are a more inclusive, equal and progressive society and sex education in Irish schools must reflect this. Young people we work with have said that sex education is not fit for purpose, does not reflect the variety of identities and sexual orientation of people today, putting the health and safety of young people at risk. Recommendations by the Oireachtas Committee on Relationships and Sexual Health, and the NCCA Review of the RSE, echo what our young people say.

Thousands of babies bodies are lost and the Mother and Baby Homes Commission state that they find it hard to believe that you don't have information about what happened to them.

****UPDATE**** So much has happened since I launched this petition in 2019. As it stands today I am still seen as a single parent to our two daughters. Following on from lengthly legal proceedings, we hope to soon have our personal situation resolved. The intended legislation, detailed below was commenced in May 2020, and many LGBTQ+ families are now benefitting from it. However so many children of LGBTQ+ families in Ireland are suffering as a result of the governments inaction to ensure that ALL family types are protected. Those still left out of any legislation are all Gay dads, and those who conceive via non clinical methods or through clinics abroad. We won't stop fighting til every child is equal. Follow me on www.instagram.com/ranaevonmeding and I'll continue posting updates on the situation as it evolves. ***Original Post*** My wife Audrey and I have two beautiful daughters. Ava is 2 and her sister Arya is 3 months old. We did Reciprocal IVF which means we used Audrey's eggs to conceive and I carried the babies. It's also known as 'Shared Motherhood'. Audrey is their biological parent and I am their birth parent. As it currently stands, under the Irish law, because I gave birth to the girls, I am seen as their parent and Audrey is seen as a legal stranger. I am married and yet I am viewed as a single parent. We equally brought our children into the world together. We equally are raising them as a family. And yet we are not viewed as a family. If anything happened to me, it's unclear if Audrey would be 'next in line' so to speak. There is new legislation coming in later this year which will allow for some same sex couples to both be registered as parents. The only couples it will apply to are female couples who have conceived in an Irish Fertility clinic using an identifiable donor. Everyone else is left out. So those who have gone abroad, those who have used an anonymous or a known to them donor, those who have done an at home insemination and like us those who have done Reciprocal IVF. Simon Harris, the Irish Minister for Health has knowingly allowed and supported legislation to come in which will split an already marginalised community into two. To put it very simply, this new law is going to cover about half of the LGBT+ community who have families. And for the other half- we won't meet the criteria to be recognised as a family. All families need to be protected. Regardless of our sex. Regardless of where and how we conceived. Whether a family was created through Adoption, Surrogacy or Fertility Treatments, they deserve protection and recognition.

Period poverty is a reality for women and girls. Sanitary products be expensive and the costs mount up every month. For many low income women its often a choice between paying essential bills and food and buying sanitary products. This is a choice that they should not have to make. A cross party group of TD's are proposing legislation that would see women and girls in direct provision, homeless hubs and in schools having access to sanitary products. https://www.rte.ie/news/politics/2019/0228/1033577-your-politics-episode-12/