Hi, we are Lisa Nic an Bhreithimh and Mo Kirwan. We first met in December 2019. Everything was going really well for us during the first 4 months and then Covid struck, turning our relationship into a long distance one! Happily, we survived with plenty of video calls and are now living together in the northside of Dublin. 

We share lots of passions including; the Irish language, dachschunds, coffee and food! That said, we also enjoy following our own passions too - Mo loves to DJ and I dedicate a lot of my spare time working on the steering committee of ShoutOut. We really enjoy spending time with the children of our friends and family and we would love to have a little person or people in our lives one day, to share the abundance of love we have as a couple with. We would particularly enjoy the laughs, the cuddles, teaching them, sharing our morals and values with them to hopefully send them on to do good and be kind. 

However, we know that having a family as an Irish based LGBTQ+ couple is complex and will throw up many legal obstacles. We feel angry that the current, strict provisions of the CFRA, on where and how a child is conceived and born will force decisions upon us that we might not want to take. We feel we should be able to have our family in the way that is right for us as a couple. 

Having said that, we are pretty sure that our child/children will be born and raised here. Ireland has come so far in such a short period of time. This should be celebrated, but should not be seen as true equality yet. So much is possible and achievable for LGBTQ+ people and their families today, but there is still much more to be done. Supporting organisations like Equality for Children and ShoutOut is a great place to start!