And think of how we challenged the idea of a male dominated Parliament with All-Women shortlists and made the cause of gender equality central to our government. We were right to do so.

As an actor you just want to work and then you just want to be on a show or have a job that you love and you hope that job will last - those things have happened. To have that platform to then talk about something that is very personal to me like marriage equality it feels like a gift. I try and really respect that voice and not abuse it.

Well my personal mission statement is that we want marriage equality in all 50 states. We want it not to be a state-by-state issue. We don't want it to be something the majority is voting on. I don't think the civil rights of any minority should be in the hands of any majority.

The March on Washington affirmed our values as a people: equality and opportunity for all. Forty-one years ago during a time of segregation these were an ideal.

Give us equality of enjoyment equal right to expansion - it is as necessary to our prosperity as yours.

The basis the corner-stone of this Government was the perfect equality of the free sovereign and independent States which made it.

In a society in which equality is a fact not merely a word words of racial or sexual assault and humiliation will be nonsense syllables.

The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.

The mandate I have received and for which I will speak with heart and head to implement over the next seven years had its four pillars - an inclusive citizenship equality and participation and respect in a creative society creating an excellence in everything we Irish do.

America 5 years after this brutal attack is testament that a Nation conceived in liberty and equality will endure. It is a triumph of millions of Americans but it is also the triumph of an idea larger than any one person larger than any one nation.