Seanad debates

Tuesday, 21 June 2022

An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business

 

12:00 pm

Photo of Fintan WarfieldFintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Government's commitment to a HIV and AIDS national monument. The Department of the Taoiseach and the Office of Public Works have announced a competition for the monument. I commend the Government on backing the campaign that has been under way for almost a decade.

Since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, more than 70 million people around the world have acquired the infection and 35 million people have died from HIV and AIDS. It is 40 years either last week or this week since the first cases of HIV and AIDS were recorded in Ireland in 1982.Much has changed. I am conscious I have spoken about HIV since "It's a Sin", on Channel 4, was released. It got everyone talking about that period and about sexual health in general. Crucially, it got sexual health professionals and front-line workers talking about sexual health strategies, and HIV and sexually transmitted infection, STI, prevention, right now. That is what we need to be doing with a memorial.

I hope the Department of the Taoiseach and the Office of Public Works, OPW, will have a consultation process that fully engages stakeholders, community folk and working-class communities who are affected by the epidemic because that is the potential the memorial presents for members of the LGBT community. The first out older generation of LGBT people have a guilt that they survived that period. As Tonie Walsh says:

It's time. Time to dry away our tears and build from them a monument to the destruction and loss from AIDS in Ireland.

I commend the Department of the Taoiseach and the OPW and call for a wide-ranging consultation process to best inform the memorial.

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