David Norris' 36-year Seanad career ends with tributes.. and two boxes of teacakes
Senator David Norris on his last day at the Seanad after 36 years. Picture: Maxwells
A 36-year career in the Seanad ended with two boxes of teacakes, tributes and a smiling David Norris, as the country's longest-serving senator departs the political stage.
Best known for his 15-year campaign to overturn Ireland’s archaic laws which criminalised homosexual acts, the firebrand senator had to fight tooth-and-nail through the Irish and European legal systems to topple the laws.
The first openly-gay man to be elected in the country, Norris helped found the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform, all while he was lecturing at Trinity College Dublin.
The first case in the long legal battle, starting in 1977, saw Norris take the attorney general to the High Court over the laws which criminalised homosexuality. He made two arguments in the High Court — one being that the laws impinged on his right to privacy.
The second was that the laws were no longer in effect as they were “repugnant to the Constitution”. This referenced Article 50 of the 1937 Constitution, which stated that laws enacted before the Constitution that are inconsistent with it are no longer in force.
Despite his arguments, the High Court ruled against him, prompting Norris to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court in 1983.
When the case came to the highest court in the land however, it was rejected by a three to two ruling. In his decision, the then Chief Justice Thomas O’Higgins ruled that the laws still remained in effect due to the “Christian nature” of the Irish State, while also arguing that homosexuality is “morally wrong”.
After losing in the Supreme Court, Norris took his case to the European Court of Human Rights which ruled that criminalising same sex activities was contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights. The law was subsequently repealed.
While he may be best remembered for his campaigning, the senator was not without controversy throughout his long political career.
In his 2011 campaign to become President of Ireland, which got off to a strong start with favourable polling initially, his candidacy hit the rocks, with the revelations that he has written to an Israeli court in 1997 seeking a pardon for a former partner, who had been convicted of statutory rape of a 15-year-old Palestinian boy.
This lead him to suspend his campaign, but he wasn’t absent from the race for long. Thousands upon thousands of names on a petition, presented to him at the gates of Leinster House, lead him to announce his return to the presidential race on the Late Late Show that September.
However, it was not to be and Norris ended the election in fifth place.
After Norris delivered his final speech in the Seanad chamber on Monday, senators swapped stories of the impact he had had on them.
Green Party Senator Róisín Garvey spoke about how she recalled Norris first being elected when she was a teenager, describing it as a “breath of fresh air in politics”, while Sinn Féin’s Fintan Warfield told how he has been a “huge inspiration” for him.
Well known for his love of Joyce, and his championing of the literary giant through the Bloomsday festival, Senator Diarmuid Wilson, in his tribute speech, made public Norris' one vice — a passionate love of Tunnocks Tea Cakes.
Mr Wilson described how, 11 years ago, his daughter attempted to give Norris a box of teacakes, but they mysteriously disappeared within the offices of Leinster House.
When his daughter heard about Norris's retirement from the Seanad, she immediately went out and bought not one — but two — boxes of teacakes for the senator to enjoy after his final speech.
But, even on his last day, there was no bending of the strict rules of Leinster House, and he was warned by the Cathaoirleach not to eat them in the Chamber. Still, a sweet political end for the country's longest-serving senator.
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