Legislation to erase historic convictions for consensual same-sex activity between men in Ireland is set to be introduced by the government this summer. Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan made the commitment on Thursday, April 16, as the Dáil debated a proposal first introduced by Sinn Féin’s Aengus Ó Snodaigh in 2025.

The TD’s legislation, developed alongside community groups like the LGBT Restorative Justice Campaign, has been cosigned by Labour, Social Democrats, Green Party, People Before Profit and several Independents, including Catherine Connolly before she became President. Its purpose is to recognise the damage that the criminalisation of consensual same-sex acts had on individuals, as well as partners, families, friends and communities.

According to Oireachtas Library research, it is estimated that at least 1,690 men were prosecuted and 941 convicted between 1950 and when decriminalisation was introduced in 1993.

Speaking about the legislation, Ó Snodaigh said it “will allow us to put an end once and for all to the wrong committed for many years. Every day wasted is a day where we are failing to account for the nation’s dark history when it comes to the persecution of gay men.”

During the debate, Minister O’Callaghan said that while he was not opposing Ó Snodaigh’s bill, the government is preparing its own legislation, which is an amendment to the Criminal Law and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill. He described it as “a more robust scheme” than Sinn Féin’s.

The Minister added that “the Attorney General’s amendment had been drafted” and that work is ongoing “in the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel”. He hopes the committee stage will take place by June, saying, “I am putting pressure on my officials” to ensure that happens.

Speaking about historical convictions for same-sex activity, Kieran Rose from the LGBT Restorative Justice Campaign expressed the importance of introducing and passing disregard legislation “as soon as possible, ideally before the Dáil rises in July”.

“A lot of men who would be alive and who are looking for disregard would be quite elderly… It’s a relatively simple piece of legislation and it could and should be done quite quickly.”

Rose also called for the scheme to include men who were convicted before 1922, as the “British government excluded the 26 counties of the republic from their disregard legislation.”

Regarding Sinn Féin’s bill, Brian Sheehan, also of the LGBT Restorative Justice Campaign, said, “The Bill would remove the lasting penal scars which befell on men convicted for the expression of ordinary intimacy between consenting adults, and which blighted the lives of many of these men. It would finally deliver a measure of redress for the historical injustices they had to endure.”

Similarly, Karl Hayden of the LGBT Restorative Justice Campaign shared, “The Bill recognises that prosecutions of these consensual offences were discriminatory on the part of the State and contrary to the human dignity and human rights of these men.”