Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I would like to raise an incident that took last place last Friday night in Dublin city, as reported on dublinlive.ieyesterday. Danilo, a Brazilian gay man, was saying goodbye to his boyfriend after a night out in town at around 3.30 a.m. when a gang of two women and four men, having seen him kissing his boyfriend, set upon him and battered him with a steel bar. He managed to get to his apartment where he called emergency services. He also rang the Garda in Kilmainham but no Garda showed up and it may now not be possible to find the culprits. The ambulance service showed up and Danilo was treated. He has confirmed that he is fine and has received a lot of support from friends but told dublinlive.iethat it is important that people know that this type of crime is happening and that he was not the first person to be attacked and, unfortunately, he will not be the last one.

Danilo is right that these attacks are still common. My own experience is similar. I have raised similar attacks in this Chamber but they often go unreported. In this case, Danilo had to go to Kilmainham Garda Station to make a statement. On numerous occasions, I have called in this House for robust hate crime legislation.Yet for some reason the Department of Justice and Equality has been sitting on its hands, so to speak, over the past term, despite this issue being the LGBT community's number one priority. We know this because the majority of LGBT people said as much in a comprehensive report that was launched by Deputy Stanton a few years ago. He is now the Minister of State, alongside the Minister, Deputy Flanagan, responsible for doing something about this. How many times do I or others have to come in here and talk about these attacks? How many more attacks must the LGBT community face? I raised this during a Commencement matter with the Minister of State a few years ago, which was reported on by Marie O'Halloran in The Irish Times. He stated at that time that other countries with hate crime law have major problems, but that we do not. We have problems, and he has both the responsibility and the power to deal with them rather than sitting on his hands. I want to see action.