DAVID NORRIS

While nominated for Person of the Year, the accolade wouldn’t have been enough to recognise all that David Norris had achieved throughout his career. Instead, he was presented with a special Lifetime Achievement award, and caught up with Alice Linehan ahead of the ceremony.

After 36 years of outstanding service, David Norris officially retired from the Seanad on January 22, 2024. Although leaving the role, the incredible legacy and work he achieved as a prominent LGBTQ+ campaigner and Ireland’s longest-serving senator will not be forgotten.

A former university lecturer, Norris was at the forefront of the Irish gay rights movement from as early as the 1970s. Alongside nine others, he was a member of the original Sexual Liberation Movement and took part in the group’s historic 1974 march outside the Department of Justice and British Embassy, calling for the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Ireland.

The following year, he became the first openly gay person to appear in an Irish TV interview. Speaking to Áine O’Connor on RTÉ’s Last House, he used his platform to reinforce that “[Homosexuals] are neither sick, ill, pathological, neurotic, or any of these emotive terms that are occasionally used by people who are not well informed on the subject to conceal their own prejudices.”

Norris was a co-founder of the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform and was also the person who, in 1977, set about achieving decriminalisation in Ireland by challenging the Attorney General in the High Court. Although he lost the initial case and the subsequent appeal in the Supreme Court, he did not give up. Spurred on by the successful 1981 ruling for Northern Irish activist Jeffrey Dudgeon, who had challenged the British government on the same grounds, Norris submitted his case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

There, he argued that the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, which criminalised “buggery”, and the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, which referred to “gross indecency”, were in breach of his right to privacy. He finally won in 1988, resulting in the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Ireland five years later.

Norris was first elected to Seanad Éireann in 1987 as an Independent candidate representing the Dublin University constituency. His campaign slogan: “Vote No 1 Norris for an end to the quiet life in the Senate”.

The result made him the first-ever openly gay person to hold public office in Ireland, and he was re-elected without fail every year until his retirement.

Catching up with David Norris ahead of the GALAS at his stunning Georgian home, we chat in front of the blazing fireplace, in which he tosses the butt of his cigarette as gameshows play on the TV in the corner. He tells us that retired life is “splendid”.

“I’m not walking enough. That’s according to my doctor. But I’m enjoying it. I vegetate in front of the television -I enjoy Frost and I enjoy the quiz games, The Chase, this sort of thing. And upstairs I have Foyle’s War and Blandings. You know Blandings? Oh, it’s terribly funny.”

He has more time for visitors now, although admits: “I quite enjoy being on my own”. As a public figure, he says that people “come in groups like buffalos” to his home, sometimes without invitation. “I mean, some people come and just bang on the door and expect me to invite them in and I have no idea who they are, they’re complete strangers. So I don’t invite them in.”

Though retirement has granted him significantly more opportunities to pause and reflect, Norris previously explained to GCN that he doesn’t believe in looking backwards. “Frank O’Connor said that was the most characteristic thing of the Irish people, the backward look, but I think it’s a mistake to be always looking back,” he stated in an interview in December 2023. It remains the same now, nine months on. “I don’t reflect on [my career] at all,” he said, adding that he is moving forward, taking things “day by day”.

When asked about the recipe for a happy life, Norris had this advice: “Don’t hurt anybody else. Enjoy life to the full in all its aspects. I just enjoy every breath I breathe in the knowledge it could be my last,” he joked.

Offering a final word of wisdom to the changemakers of today who want to make a difference, as Norris did throughout his career, he said: “The main thing is you’ve got to believe in [the cause] firmly yourself. That’s the main thing, motivation.”