Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak to the House on funding to LGBT+ groups. Ireland has become a proud, progressive and modern State that supports and cherishes all people equally. We have made great strides in recent decades to promote equality and respond to the changing needs of a diverse population.

I am here today to discuss the funding provided to LGBT+ groups in 2021 and 2022. The LGBTI+ community service fund supports groups working to promote inclusion, protect rights and improve quality of life and well-being for members of the LGBTI+ community, enabling them to participate fully in Ireland's social, economic, cultural and political life.

Each year, there is a competitive open call for funding. All applications are independently evaluated by an assessment team to determine eligibility for funding in strict adherence with assessment criteria contained within the published guidelines, and are subject to review by an external reviewer. Each year, the Department receives a significant number of applications of a high standard for consideration. In the past two years, the LGBTI+ community services fund has been oversubscribed.

I will address the disappointing inference made here that what is a standard and commonplace feature of departmental financial procedures is somehow in this case an attempt by me to divert funding away from vulnerable groups. A standard procedure exists under Government financial procedures to allow funds allocated under any subhead that are not going to be used before the year end to be reallocated for use under another subhead. This process is known as virement. It occurs in every Department and has taken place in my Department 26 times over the past three years. I stress that moneys that are uncommitted and cannot be spent by the year end are returned to the Central Fund, returned to the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform or must be reallocated within a departmental Vote.

As part of the normal monitoring of ongoing expenditure, budget holders and the Department’s central finance unit are required to be alert as to whether there are uncommitted funds in any area that could be reallocated under virement. Any decision to seek sanction for virement must be approved at senior level before being submitted to the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform.

It is disappointing in the extreme that Members in both Houses, charged with financial oversight of government, would seek to engage in outright misinformation and yet again, in doing so, although always implied and unspoken, the charge rests that I, as a gay politician, must be up to no good in an effort to benefit my community and would go so far as to take funding away from other vulnerable people to do so. This is an easy villain trope to peddle, and how shamelessly it is being done.

I repeat that the virement process has been undertaken 26 times in my Department over the past three years, and yet this instance has been singled out. That is not by accident and it has an impact. The Senator may have heard me recently talk about the level of abuse that I and other LGBT+ politicians and activists are receiving. Central to much of the recent tranche of messages I have received, which are full of disgusting accusations such as “paedophile”, “groomer”, and “not safe to be around children”, is the accusation that I have done something untoward as regards funding.

Whatever about me, this has an impact on other people - vulnerable people - and that can be immense. Last year saw the highest level of violence towards LGBTI+ people in Europe. Yet here I find myself summoned by the Senator to account to this Chamber on the premise of an absolute lie. It is beneath the Senator and it is beneath this Chamber. There is no possible genuine concern here. The Senator knows how the budgetary process works and she should know better.