India, March 14 -- 1How did you find your voice as a gay man of Irish and Indian heritage? That's a really good question. Thank you for asking me this. It is a bit of a complex subject so I don't have a straight answer for you, but allow me to think through this. 2I am not expecting a straight answer from a gay politician. Go ahead, tell me. (Laughs) You are so funny! I don't have a bent answer either. I grew up in Ireland as a person of colour, so I realised pretty early that I was different. Being gay added another dimension to that. These two things made me stand apart from most of the boys and young men I grew up around. I am not really sure how I found my voice because I am very comfortable right now with who I am, being an Irish person of colour and Indian heritage, and being a gay man, but that wasn't the case when I was maybe 25 or 30 years old. I need to think about this. 3Ireland has produced five Booker Prize winners. What makes the government prioritise support for writers? This is part of Ireland's soft power policy. We are a small country that wants to be a cultural superpower. For a lot of people in India, China and Latin America, their first encounter with Ireland is through culture. Support for art, literature, music, dance and cinema is a good investment for diplomatic reasons but it is also good for people's lives and their souls. 4At the Jaipur Literature Festival, you said the Irish feel a sense of solidarity with Palestinians. How do you see your role in this respect? It is much easier to be an activist than to be a politician. In some ways, I can now be more of an activist than a politician because a politician often has to balance competing interests. Ireland has good principles around democracy, human rights and rule of law, but we also have a strong economic relationship with the United States, which we don't want to jeopardise. Meanwhile, arguments aren't always won by the people who shout the loudest. What I have tried to do within the European Union is bring member countries closer to our position, which is support for Palestine. 5Same-sex couples in India cannot legally marry.What lessons can India draw from the Irish on the issue of marriage equality? I never go to another country and tell them what they should do. It is a decision for India to make. What I would say to the Indian people is that it was only in the 1990s that Ireland decriminalised homosexuality and legalised divorce. It was only in the last decade that we have allowed marriage equality and abortion. As these changes were taking place, there were people who said that families would be destroyed. But the truth is that no one has been harmed. Our society has progressed. Rights have been won....