Filmmaker and lecturer Barry Dignam and his partner of seventeen years, Hugh Walsh, become the first gay couple in Irish history to enter into a civil partnership on April 5, 2011. The event takes place at the Registry Office in Dublin City Centre.

Dignam and Walsh hail their wedding as an emotional milestone. The couple says their simple civil partnership ceremony signals how far the country has come on in recent years.

Both have already set their sights on full marriage, allowing the same rights and protections afforded to heterosexual partners, as the next landmark in a struggle for equality.

“We just need that little bit more of a push now,” says a beaming Dignam alongside his partner moments after the ceremony. “Now that people realise the sky is not going to fall down, that push for civil marriage is not a far journey at all.”

Dignam and Walsh say they have been waiting seventeen years to formalise their commitment to each other in the eyes of the State.

“When we met it was illegal to be gay in Ireland,” Dignam says. “Now we are having a civil partnership, it is pretty amazing the change that’s happened. But we still have places to go yet.”

The Dubliners become the public face of same-sex weddings in the Republic of Ireland as the first in line to openly exchange vows after the mandatory three-month wait.

Six other gay couples who were granted court exemptions have already signed the partnership register, away from the spotlight, since the laws were enacted at the beginning of the year.

(From: “Gay couple hail milestone wedding,” Irish Independent, http://www.independent.ie, April 5, 2011)