Ireland\u2019s Disregard Scheme was enacted<\/a> to officially remove the criminal records of people punished for consensual same-sex activity.<\/p>\nThe disregard bill, which came about after years of advocacy from groups such as the LGBT+ Restorative Justice Campaign, also requires the government to carry out a public awareness campaign about the law at home and abroad \u2013 which may reach the people who fled the country before decriminalisation.<\/p>\n
The LGBT+ Restorative Justice Campaign is currently trying to get face-to-face time with the Minister for Justice to discuss how the public awareness programme will be carried out.<\/p>\n
A Department of Justice spokesperson said that officials have been in touch with the campaign group with a view to arranging a meeting in the coming days, and will continue to engage with the group as the scheme becomes operational phase and the public information campaign is launched<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a first step, the Department has asked the group to help ensure that the views of applicants are taken into account in the design of application forms and of the overall applications process. Bringing the perspective of users into the design process from the beginning will help ensure maximum accessibility for the Scheme,\u201d they said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite positive changes in Ireland, campaigners say the scars left from the time before decriminalisation left a mark on members of the LGBTQ+ community, many of whom never returned to Ireland.<\/p>\n
![\"edef19a2-\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1793064135_889_.jpeg\")
\n The LGBT+ Restorative Justice Campaign received an award for advocacy around the disregard bill at The GALAS on 3 October. Left to right: Ged Nash TD, Bill Foley, Kieran Rose, Brian Sheehan and Karl Hayden. Karl Hayden<\/p>\n
Karl Hayden\n<\/p>\n
\u2018They were forced out\u2019<\/p>\n
Kieran Rose, an activist who has been campaigning for the community since 1980 and a founding member of the LGBT+ Restorative Justice Campaign, said that for those who fled, Ireland becoming a more progressive country doesn\u2019t change the experience they had.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think that trauma would have left. It doesn\u2019t change what happened to them,\u201d he told The Journal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a very difficult time. We were very marginalised. I was living down in Cork, and there were no social facilities for gay people to meet up, and it was a very small group,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said that many young people he knew at the time emigrated, including those in the Cork Gay Collective, which he founded.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost people did emigrate at some stage or other. Some came back, some didn\u2019t,\u201d he said, adding that some of those who left Ireland had a deep hatred of the country.<\/p>\n
They would have felt that it wasn\u2019t a voluntary immigration; that they were forced out.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a whole part of our social history that we haven\u2019t really come to terms with,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Rose remembers decriminalisation bringing \u201chuge relief\u201d to himself and other members of the LGBTQ+ community.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was like a weight that was lifted from our shoulders, kind of a weight that we didn\u2019t really know was there.\u201d However, he said that decriminalisation didn\u2019t immediately change things for gay people in Ireland in practice.<\/p>\n
![\"river](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1793064136_879_.jpeg\")
\n A scene from the 1988 Pride march. Leon Farrell \/ Photocall Ireland<\/p>\n
Leon Farrell \/ Photocall Ireland \/ Photocall Ireland\n<\/p>\n
Mary McAuliffe, historian and director of Gender Studies at University College Dublin, told The Journal that although experiences varied depending on where people lived, overall 20th-century Ireland wasn\u2019t a \u201cparticularly progressive country\u201d.<\/p>\n
McAuliffe said Ireland was in a state of flux, and in cities such as Dublin or Cork, there was a sense that things were changing. However, she said many would have still viewed homosexuality as a \u201cdeviancy and sinful\u201d.<\/p>\n
For those living in cities, McAuliffe said that it could be an exciting time as communities were forming and LGBTQ+ events were taking place, but she said you also \u201chad to be wary of not being too obvious and too out\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were parts of the city that you shouldn\u2019t go in,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a time of transformation in which things were potentially happening, and they did happen, but the remnants of that traumatising Ireland were still there.\u201d<\/p>\n
McAuliffe said many people left the country to escape the \u201cdead hand of respect\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Patsy disappeared or left for England, he didn\u2019t disappear. He just chose to go somewhere else,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the people who did leave, who were traumatised by attitudes to homosexuality, they took that hurt with them,\u201d she said. \u201cIn many ways, Patsy O\u2019Sullivan is emblematic of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said this legacy is something we need to acknowledge and reckon with as a country.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hurt and the trauma meant people cut themselves off from their country and didn\u2019t come back at all, or maybe didn\u2019t come back for a couple of decades until it became obvious that we in Ireland had changed significantly.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"8049edef-\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1793064137_323_.jpeg\")
\n Members of the LGBT+ Restorative Justice Campaign at The GALAS on 3 October. Left to right: Karl Hayden, Kieran Rose, Ged Nash TD and Brian Sheehan. Karl Hayden<\/p>\n
Karl Hayden\n<\/p>\n
Karl Hayden, another founding member of the LGBT+ Restorative Justice Campaign, said his campaigning on the disregard bill has led him to learn of many people who left Ireland.<\/p>\n
Speaking to The Journal, Hayden said people left Ireland for economic opportunities, to be in societies where they would feel more accepted, and to avoid convictions.<\/p>\n
He said that in some cases, people left Ireland with criminal convictions under anti-gay laws, and lived illegally in other countries as their convictions prevented them from becoming naturalised. Some of these people may still be living abroad without immigration status.<\/p>\n
The disregard bill means they no longer have a criminal conviction and are now able to access citizenship in the countries where they have built their lives.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of untold stories like [Patsy’s] out there,\u201d Hayden said.<\/p>\n
For Hayden, leaving Ireland was an \u201cescape plan if something happened\u201d, but he never wanted to leave.<\/p>\n
Life after decriminalisation<\/p>\n
![\"a-pride-marchers-in-vibrant-rainbow-colors-celebrating-10-years-of-marriage-equality-at-dublin-pride-parade-28-june-2025\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1793064137_14_.jpeg\")
\n Campaigners say the fight for equality has come a long way, but more needs to be done. Image shows Dublin Pride Parade in 2025. Alamy Stock Photo<\/p>\n
Alamy Stock Photo\n<\/p>\n
Hayden remembers the \u201camazing\u201d moment decriminalisation passed in 1993.<\/p>\n
He was standing in the D\u00e1il and himself and other campaigners started cheering and clapping, and he recalled politicians in the chamber clapping too.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen the ushers came running into the public gallery to tell us to be quiet and to leave because we\u2019d made noise,\u201d he laughed.<\/p>\n
After decriminalisation, he said changes came gradually rather than all at once.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce different groups of people were kind of confidently identifying themselves, then it meant that other people in the community felt a sense of confidence in themselves, and in identifying and coming out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore and more people were coming out and talking to their families, and you heard less stories of people who had bad experiences in doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hayden said that although Ireland has \u201ccome a huge way\u201d from the time before decriminalisation, more work still needs to be done.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s taken a long period of time for change to come about. But there\u2019s still the experience for people out there where they are discriminated against because of their sexual orientation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, sadly, it\u2019s trans people who are the target of a lot of that as well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A CORK MAN who went missing 34 years ago was located deceased in the UK this month \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[282256,220360,10971,61,60,14259,282257,4829,1361,43,2733,282258],"class_list":["post-666351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-anti-gay-laws","tag-decriminalisation","tag-emigration","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-lgbt","tag-lgbt-rights","tag-lgbtq","tag-lgbtq-rights","tag-news","tag-october","tag-patsy-o"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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