Labour Senator Ivana Bacik has defended her remarks calling for a ban on male circumcision. 
Speaking in the Seanád on Thursday, she said that she didn’t “believe that the cutting of a child’s genitals for anything other than medical reasons is ever justified”.
Male circumcision is a religious requirement in both Islam and Judaism.
She was responding to a query made on Wednesday by Independent NUI Senator Ronan Mullen.
Senator Mullen asked Senator Bacik about comments she made at the World Atheist Convention the previous weekend.
Senator Mullen said he was “astonished to read at the weekend, however, that Senator Bacik, at a World Atheist Convention, was reported as being approving of an Irish ban on what she called male genital mutilation”.
He added that he wasn’t sure that male genital mutilation was “an appropriate characterisation of circumcision and whether that is what she meant”.
Senator Mullen said: We have medical expertise in the House and we can debate in due course whether there is a medical case for such a ban, but I did not hear that in what Senator Bacik said.
Has Senator Bacik considered that such a proposal could be deeply insensitive towards the Jewish and Muslim communities?”
In response, Senator Bacik said that, at the conference, she mentioned her Bill on female genital mutilation and somebody in the audience had asked her what she thought about male genital mutilation.
She continued: “I said I thought it was of a different scale and of a different order entirely to female genital mutilation but personally I do not believe that the cutting of a child’s genitals for anything other than medical reasons is ever justified.
“I stand over that and I have had a good deal of support from individual members of the public on that stance.”
Her comments come after a proposal to ban male circumcision was placed on the ballot in upcoming elections in San Francisco and Santa Monica.
The proposal there has led to criticism from Jewish leaders.