Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This is a year of anniversaries. Thirty years ago, homosexuality was decriminalised, 40 years ago a march from Liberty Hall to Fairview Park took place, which led to the first Dublin Pride parade in the same year, and 50 years ago, in 1973, the sexual liberation movement was established in Trinity College, laying the groundwork for transformative change. A lot of progress has been made in the intervening years but there is still more to do. In March, An Garda Síochána revealed that there had been a 29% increase in reported hate crimes and hate-related incidents in 2022, up from 448 in 2021 to 582 last year. Sexual orientation was the second most common factor in incidents where discrimination was the motive. There is, therefore, no room for complacency around the progress that has been made.

Recently, in my constituency of Tipperary an attempt was made to dampen the celebration of Tipperary's Pride festival. Somebody placed posters in various locations that tried to deliberately misrepresent the Pride campaign by slandering it through associations with grooming and anti-religious symbolism. The people who put up these posters should take time to reflect on what it is they think they can achieve by demonising people who just want acceptance. They should ask themselves if they are working from a position of knowledge or if they are repeating what they hear in the echo chambers of social media. The organisers of Pride, whom I know very well, are more than willing to talk to and answer questions of anyone who may be working from a misinformed point of view.

This work is not just for members of Pride to do; more needs to be done on a societal level. All schools, communities and political representatives should reach out more to the LGBTQI+ community to combat isolation and give young people who have questions somewhere to go or someone to talk to for help and support. Supports for LGBTQI+ people in our communities are in short supply. There is still a shortage of social outlets for LGBTQI+ people, for example, drop-in centres and talking groups. Such places of mutual support are important, especially for people who may not know where to go to talk to someone or need support for any reason. I urge the Government to work to address this shortfall. We need to push out discrimination through education and support those who are in need of support in our schools and communities. I urge the Minister to act on this because we have all seen what can happen if we fail to act.

Given that we are in a year of anniversaries, I encourage the Government to do all it can to progress the legislative drafting process to introduce the scheme to disregard the criminal records of gay men convicted of historical offences in Ireland.

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