Welcome to another episode of The Restless Politics Leading with me, Anastacample and with

me, Rory Stewart.

Join today by the T-shirt of Ireland, Leo Verretka, and very, very, very happy we are to be

with you.

My pleasure.

I've been a big fan.

I was hoping to get around to doing this sometime in July, so we've found the opportunity

here in Belfast.

Thank you.

I want to start by just particularly for an audience outside, maybe Ireland and further

beyond the UK, just to get a sense of you.

And this also does speak to a sense of how Ireland has changed.

I think to have a gay background immigrant politician who is a doctor, that's not that

common either, all sorts of things in your story that speak to a modern Ireland.

But I just think if you could maybe give us a sense about what it was like growing

up here.

With your background, gay young man in a country that traditionally, very, very conserved

as socially.

Yeah, well, I grew up in 1980s Ireland, which was a very different place, a conservative

country in which our constitution forbade things like divorce.

And when I was four years old, the people voted by an overwhelming margin to copper fasten

our ban on abortion back in 83804, so that gives you a sense of how much has changed

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