Independent Senator Ronan Mullen has said last week’s passing of the Hate Crime Bill in the Oireachtas places “radical gender politics” firmly into Statute Law.

While 2015 legislation allowed people to change their legal sex upon request, to either ‘male’ or ‘female’, the latest Act recognises other ‘genders’.

Speaking to The Irish Catholic, Senator Mullen said that the new law doesn’t confine itself to male or female but instead ‘transgender’ or any form of gender expression including a gender that’s neither male nor female, what you have is radical gender politics coming in for the first time into our statute law.”

He added: “My concern is by introducing this new definition of gender that it would be the Government’s intention and NGOs who are very well-connected politically, to push to have that new definition of gender, which is coming from a very ideological place, to replace the time-honoured definition of gender in other areas of our law in the future,” he said. “Even if it’s just in connection with hate crimes, it sets a bad precedent for the future.”