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FINE GAEL SENATOR Eamonn Coghlan has delivered a passionate call for a Yes vote in the same-sex marriage referendum and revealed his own struggle with coming to terms with his son’s sexuality.
The former World Champion runner spoke about the difficulties his son Michael faced as a result of being gay in a speech to a Fine Gael LGBT public information meeting tonight.
“When I discovered my son, Michael was gay I was devastated. I cried for weeks. The hopes and dreams I had for my son were shattered. I felt guilty, almost as if I was to blame for him being gay,” Coghlan told the audience in Portlaoise.
I tried to cover up my disappointment. While I hugged him, told him I loved him, I had to come to terms that, it was not about me but, about him and his life ahead.
He said the breakthrough came when some of Michael’s friends, who are also gay, joined a family holiday in Spain.
But Coghlan said that his son was subjected to abuse and, on two occasions, violent physical attacks in Dublin.
“I got to know them and see how happy he was with his mates. Michael is a grown man now but he suffered awful bullying in school. At the time we didn’t know why this was happening but after he came out it became apparent that it was because he was gay.
“He had also suffered from terrible stomach problems as a teen which we could never get diagnosed. It transcribed that this was all anxiety related because of the struggle he had with knowing he was gay and the bullying he was being subjected to.”
The abuse didn’t stop after he came out. He was subject to two particularly violent physical attacks in Dublin on account of his being gay.
Coghlan delivered a powerful endorsement of the referendum in 22 May, saying: “I was lucky enough to marry the woman of my dreams. Who are we as a nation to deny our sons and daughters the basic right of marrying the person they love?”
He also said:
It is clear to me as a parent of a gay child that the marriage equality Referendum is about voting for real people and their lives. It is not about politics or about voting for a particular party.
It is about equality, removing rejection, removing exclusion, removing the guilt, shame and fear that gay people experience. We have to think of the person, their dignity, their validation, their human freedom to love and to live life to the full.
Michael Coghlan, 27, was not at the meeting tonight and is currently living in California.
The meeting in Portlaoise is part of a series of public information events that Fine Gael LGBT has organised around the country ahead of the referendum.
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Frightening news. Huge employer here.
Well there is a surprise, I have a bet between Intel 1st and HP. Both very close to each other in leixlip/maynooth/celbridge
and IBM. Its quite scary
I took voluntary redundancy from Intel in 2000, they offered a savage package, if they did the same again there would be plenty of volunteers
I had to do some work in Intel a few years ago and boy it was one place I would hate to work in. The people looked stressed out and miserable.
Oh I hope Wally Mooney has some intelligent, measured and well-conceived commentary on this…
Surely Ruth Coppinger would nationalise this, just like her plan for Dell!!!
…..Any moment now
We should play Wally Bingo. Let’s see how often the post uses the following words or terms ‘workers’ ‘exploits’ capitalist’ ‘profit’ creating wealth’ solidarity with Luas and/or cadburys’
‘Gifted by capital’…’working class’….’odious debt’…’backs of workers’…’fiat currency’…’keystrokes’…YAAAAAWWWWN.
“Macro economics”
Banksters, Neo-liberals, Scabs, Rack Rents, Banker Tax, Capitalist Elite, The 1% ,
Oh, shut it.
Not you, Moran, parmesan etc.
On reflection, you also.
It would be more interesting to hear your comments Collie, John, Greg etc. ? This after all is your beloved capitalist system in action.
A highly profitable company with massive financial resources make a strategic positioning alteration, cloud focused, and dispenses with 11,000 employees who were critical to its past and present success.
Put not your trust in large corporations unless you have your timely exit strategy worked out.
Unless of course you were going to be offering those 11,000 jobs tomorrow even if just for a few short years, I think I would put my trust in a large corporation first thanks. .
True, but who in the world actually expects their employer to put their job before the good of the company? Who in the world expects their job to be secure on the decade scale? Who in the world hasn’t kept their eye on the job market even when they’re happy where they are?
Public sector workers, perhaps. That’s a very different culture though.
Krups, atari, dell, banta, all huge factories that pulled out and near destroyed one city in the country. And I’m sure there are other urban areas have been equally destroyed by big factories moving in, making micro economies and then…gone. What have we learned?
Well said Fiona, one should always read the small print and look for what they exclude. Eg mental health care for the stress these companies place. I could not believe that in Intel that in one office no one could leave until their boss left even if it Kent staying on 2/3 hours more after 5. Shocking!
When you use words such as ‘destroyed’ you lose credibility in my books Jenni. Such ridiculous hyperbole is not needed. When Krups, Dell etc left limerick left it caused an upsurge in unemployment which would be obvious, and then most got new jobs over the following years. If they had chosen never to have located operations in Ireland we would have been far worse off. You can’t keep foreign company’s here forever and ever.
Luas drivers and their union?
Fiona would you prefer they never came in the first place. Lefties you just love wallowing in misery. Never mind Intel has contributed massively to Ireland for a quarter of a century.
As an employee in Leixlip not sure what to think, VSP will be popular among people there 10+ years, but for us only in the door graduates the fear looms of uncertainty especially knowing we are easy targets for payoffs
Last in, first out which is usually total bull
Huge amount of building work going on to expand the plant in Leixlip can’t see them putting to much money into it if they’re going to sack everyone down there.
Plans change. The cost of those expansions are a drop in the ocean for them.
They’re spending 5bn there so that sites probably safe but there are sires in Cork and Shannon and those guys must be worried. Hopefully they’ll be OK.Intel have a lot invested in Ireland.
There is a link to that story from 2014 at the top of the comments. €3.5bn investment here for the new wave of technology.
They built a mega fab in arizona in 2012 and left it empty. …anything is possible
Yes but the operation in Dublin is too important. They will downscale the smaller divisions and probably admin operations given IT is now driving the admin through self service anyway. I doubt/hope not much of a cut in Dublin
Shannon and Cork are software and sales sites. Basically acquisitions. I would very much doubt they are impacted. The rationale behind this is around falling PC sales.
As time passes it takes less and less people to do a job as we automate more and let the computers take over…with a rising population, has anyone stopped and ask what will everybody do ? Answer is a revolution of epic proportions…probably after we have all long passed…but still something that will happen
Yer watching Terminator too much…
Doubt their offshore 12.5% corporation tax goldmine, or in other words ‘Ireland’ will be impacted too much,
Ireland is a cost centre for Intel, just like any other. The rate of tax is not dependent on headcount – equating the two is nonsensical.
True, I stand corrected.
I still believe there’s an argument to be made in terms of the more people these international companies employ in Ireland, the less risk of corporation tax being hiked.
Fab 24 contributed 13.2 billion to its overall output in the past year, its the only Fab currently in the world producing chips at a massive scale, still doesnt mean any of us are guarenteed our jobs in the next few months
Where is Ruth Coppinger – quick , nationalise it . The Irish can make their own chips out of potatoes. Isnt that right Ruth
Surely will have a direct impact on Irish workforce given the numbers here. You’d imagine the Dell/EMC merger will be another organisation shedding jobs as part of a restructure!
@icantiwont: Dell/EMC has already shed jobs at the start of January in Ireland and U.S.
Every time we get good news jobs announcements (donegal last few days), it’s like the gov know what’s coming and are making some half hearted attempt to lessen the impact of the bad news that’s gonna soon follow.
We don’t have a Government
Oops. I forgot, amid all the chaos ensuing without our “great” ones!
The thing about semiconductor manufacture is that it depends on so much plant. The cleanrooms and facilities are a big investment in themselves. The plant tends.to gol on to the jobs.
Now if Intel was a public service company rather than a private company………..
or an ex semi-state like telecom/eircom/eir…….
…computers would all be running on AMD chips?
For about twenty minutes on the third Tuesday in March!
First off any job loss is unfortunate and hopefully the number impacted in Ireland is relatively low. If they are, i hope they get a whopping redundancy package to compensate.
But this is the reality with any multinational based in Ireland this is a corporation not a public service entity, or a zombie bank with vested interests in keeping it alive. Its a profit making publicly trading company and is realigning its operations to best service its long term interests and strategy. read the press release – https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/news-release-intel-announces-restructuring/
Hopefully the operations in Ireland are more aligned with the long term strategy, i would believe they are given the huge investment recently announced. Ultimately a small business can decide to make similar changes or cuts to survive and this happens every day, while others are growing, With corporations its magnified as the numbers are much bigger. In a healthy functioning economy the losses are outweighed by the gains and overtime the jobs lost are replaced by different jobs, possibly higher skilled jobs.
Its up to us to recognize the opportunities and future education needs so we are best placed to capitalize going forward. I think there is a lot more we should be doing in that regard in developing a long term strategy as a country rather than fighting over petrol pump politics. The real world is constantly changing and moving forward and we need to evolve with it. There is no such thing as a job for life in the private sector, companies can come and go but you can build a career and profession but this can span multiple companies. Just make sure you are building a decent pension and make good financial choices for the long term.
Leixlip makes the tech which BK was talking about server/data centre products and IoT the products rolling out of Ireland are the best in class proven (source. I work there) there will be cuts but more than likely people away from the production aspect… Non ‘value added’ people I.e . SoC products are the big sellers (which are designed here) are why they chose Ireland as the main production hub for Europe. Consistently outperforming US manufacturing on cost, productivity and quality can only be a good thing.
And some people scoffed at the idea of nationalising DELL etc. Jobs went anyway. Here we go again. Thanks for the exploitation capitalism. Hope you made a good profit on our backs.
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