For the past five years, the Dublin Pride Parade, which is the second largest parade in Ireland, has been diverted away from the main thoroughfares of the country’s capital city.

In August, Pope Francis was allowed to parade down O’Connell Street, despite the cost incurred. Every year, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade takes place on the city’s main thoroughfares. Yet Dublin Pride, which this year brought 60,000 people to Dublin’s city centre, along with the attendant income for businesses in the city, is fully diverted away from the city’s main thoroughfares, O’Connell Street and Dame Street.

We call on the Taoiseach and all the relevant government departments to ensure funding for Dublin Pride to march down O’Connell Street and Dame Street on the last Saturday in June 2019.

We further call on the government to ensure that it be enshrined that the Dublin Pride Parade, which is the second largest major cultural event in the city after the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, is always allowed march through O’Connell Street and Dame Street on the last Saturday in June, commemorating the liberation of LGBT people at Stonewall on the last Saturday in June 1969.