The Minister for Justice will introduce amending legislation which will expunge convictions before 1993 when same-sex activity was decriminalised.
Jim O’Callaghan said in the Dáil on Wednesday: “I am very conscious that these men, and they are predominantly men, have waited a very long time for the exoneration to which they are entitled. I do not want to delay the process any further.”
He will bring forward amendments “hopefully in March” to the Criminal Law and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill.
Debate on the legislation starts in the Dáil on Thursday and will include amendments “in respect of disregard legislation”, he said.
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Labour finance spokeswoman Ged Nash said “there are old men in this country who have criminal records only because of who they are, of who they love and loved, and when. That is plain wrong.”
He had asked for an update on legislation he introduced in 2016 “to provide for an exoneration for men who were convicted of engaging in consensual same-sex sexual activity prior to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1993”. Mr Nash said “the first part of that process was the historic State apology issued in both Houses of the Oireachtas in July 2018 for the way in which this State and society treated their LGBT+ citizens.
“The second element of that process was the initiation of a process to set aside pre-1993 convictions.”
The National LGBTQ+ Federation (NXF) welcomed the announcement.
In a statement, NXF board director Adam Long said that it would “finally remove a deeply offensive stain of criminality from many mainly older gay men who were so unjustly persecuted for the expression of their inherent identity, prior to the repeal of homophobic legislation in 1993″.
Mr Long said the laws were anti-gay and “always an affront to basic dignity and human rights, a reality acknowledged in the official State apology delivered on the occasion of Pride in 2018”.
“The removal of any and all criminal convictions is the second, crucial element of a process that recognises a grave wrong committed by the Irish State, which continued to actively enforce the colonial-era homophobic laws long after independence,” he said.
NXF said it was awaiting specific details around the announcement and it called for a comprehensive approach grounded in the findings of a working group report on the matter published in 2023.
“A similar scheme introduced in Britain a number of years ago was widely criticised for being too narrow and which in some cases led to victims being retraumatised.”
Mr Long said he wanted to acknowledge the efforts of those within the LGBTQ+ community and political allies such as Mr Nash which paved the way for Wednesday’s announcement.
