Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Deputy for his question. I am very aware of his long-standing interest and commitment in respect of this issue. I regret that there is a series of legislative priorities within my Department's remit at present. Departmental staff are working on 31 Bills. Officials in the Department, along with their counterparts in the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel, continue to work on this Bill, and all the other legislation, as promptly as possible. It may not be satisfactory from the Deputy's point of view that I cannot give him a definitive timeline for when the heads of Bill will be published, but it is still very much a clear commitment of this Government, as referenced in the programme for Government, to address the historical wrongs that were done to people who were criminalised under these laws.

I am committed to publishing the relevant heads of Bill in due course. As the Deputy will know, these Victorian-era laws criminalised consensual sexual activity between men until those laws were repealed in 1993. He mentioned that in 2021, a working group was formed to examine the disregard of such convictions. The group met 11 times during its tenure. In late 2022, the Department held a public consultation on key issues related to the development of a scheme to disregard relevant convictions. That consultation process received nearly 150 submissions from wide groups of societal interests throughout the country. Their deliberations were invaluable and helped shape the final recommendations from the group. A summary report of this extensive consultation has since been published.

Then Minister, Deputy McEntee, published the group’s final report in 2023. It contains 95 recommendations. I am committed to translating these recommendations into heads of Bill. I will do so as promptly as I can, but I have to be frank with the Deputy in saying there are so many different competing interests that I would have to take people off another Bill to expedite this Bill in order to get it done as promptly as possible.

See this speech in context