I would like to welcome the Minister and say that I hope he will have some positive news for us today. The matter I wish to raise is the need for the Minister for the Environment to set in motion forthwith the necessary machinery for allocating appropriate public funding from the national lottery for the rebuilding of the Hirschfeld Centre in Dublin. I would like to divide my time. I will be taking about ten minutes and then, perhaps, give two minutes to Senator Avril Doyle, two minutes to Senator Upton and two minutes to Senator Shane Ross. The Progressive Democrats indicated they would like two minutes and there is a possibility that Fianna Fáil, may require time. I have had positive indications of support from them, but I do not know if there is anybody available at the moment.
This is a reiteration of a motion I placed before the Seanad on the Adjournment of 2 November 1988. I would like to refer anybody who is interested to that debate because therein I lay out the origins of the Hirschfeld Centre in Dublin, which is the gay community and social services centre. Therefore, it comes very clearly within the remit of national lottery funding. There is an active application for funding with the Department of the Environment and there is a great deal of money available through the lottery. On the last occasion Minister Connolly indicated that he regretted he was not able to give money because it had already been allocated and there was none left.
I have before me records of the latest allocations of money from the national lottery and it makes very interesting reading. A lot of the projects are very worthy. Page after page shows allocations to the GAA, scout dens and golf clubs. I am not at all impugning these allocations but hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pounds are allocated in this way. If no money is made available to the Hirschfeld Centre it will raise certain questions about the priorities of the Government. I make this point: money invested in the Hirschfeld Centre is well and wisely invested.
During the career of the Hirschfeld Centre we published 250,000 leaflets on sexual hygiene with particular regard to AIDS. Ireland has a different profile with regard to this disease to any other country in Europe and it is acknowledged at Government level that a large measure of the credit for this devolves upon the Hirschfeld Centre because of this information campaign. If one takes into account the fact that every person who does not get AIDS saves the Exchequer £35,000 a year, regardless of any delicacy or hesitancy on the part of certain Government Ministers, the crude fact of economics would indicate that this is a very good investment.
I would like to draw the attention of the House to the fact, for example, that the Danish Government have taken this notion very clearly on board. Time does not permit me to go through every other country in Europe, but during the summer when I was at an international meeting on the Convention on Human Rights I met the former Minister for Education of Denmark, Mrs. Dorte Bennedsen. I discussed this matter with her and I have before me today a resolution of the Danish Folketinget, their parliament, which in 1988 granted £780,000 to the national gay organisation for its work on AIDS. A second resolution grants 1,500,000 Kroner directly for social and recreational services to the gay organisation, quoting principally the importance of this facility in the fight against AIDS. It should be fairly clear how this is done.
The gay population is a diverse population. It is not easy to contact and through a group like the Hirschfeld Centre you have concentrated a reservoir of people who are otherwise difficult to reach. It is possible to saturate that population group with information on subjects like health, safe sex techniques and so on. It is for this reason that the Danish Government made this massive allocation of funding. So I would say again that the money is there and if we do not get the money, I will not be satisfied. I will have to ask, is there some kind of mental block on the part of some Government Ministers? I say that with some regret. I believe most people in the Government parties are decent people. It is interesting, however, that all of the unfortunate remarks that have been made, such as the description of myself as a pervert, such as the unfortunate remarks made yesterday, emanated from the Government side. This is an unhealthy context in which to fight a battle for funding for a very worthy project.
There is a political aspect to this too. I would like to place very clearly on the record of the House that I have overwhelming support not only in this House, as was demonstrated by the last debate, but also in the other House. For example, I received on 12 April 1990 a warm letter of endorsement from the then Tánaiste, Brian Lenihan. I have also before me a letter from Mr. Desmond O'Malley, TD, indicating support for lottery funding, dated 12 December 1989. I have before me a letter of 10 November 1989 from Alan Dukes, TD, indicating the same thing. I have a strong endorsement from Dick Spring, TD, indicating the same thing of 2 November 1989 and I have, dated 30 November 1989, a similar strong endorsement from Proinsias De Rossa, TD. In other words, the then second in command of the Government, the Leaders of all the parties, including a partner in Government, have indicated massive endorsement for funding for this project. So, it is a matter of some puzzlement to me that we may again — perhaps I am anticipating unfairly — be facing a situation where funding will not be made available.
I would like to place on the record of the House that I am committed to the reopening of this centre. I consider it a matter of national importance. The Minister may, or may not, be aware that I regularly do charity work. I have raised very considerable sums of money; I have raised a couple of hundred thousand pounds for different charities. On Sunday I will be doing a show for a very worthy cause which will raise £15,000 in one night. This is a one-man show based on the works of James Joyce. I will regret if, in January, I have to cancel every other fund raising activity to raise funds for causes which find it difficult to get money, in a difficult situation, and devote myself entirely in the coming year to raising money here, in England and in America, through the promotion of this show to open the centre, but open it I will. It will be embarrassing to have to ask a Government Minister, who has not been able to provide any money, to attend the opening of such a centre, but I will do so in order to heap coals of fire on his or her head.
I would like to place on the record of the House the fact that, as a member of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Women's Rights, I raised this issue. In this Administration and in the last, that committee unanimously adopted as part of their brief the question of discrimination against gay people as a parallel discrimination to that against women. As a result of this, the chairperson of that committee has written, at the direction of the committee, to the Minister for the Environment, to the Minister for Health and to the Taoiseach indicating that they require money from the lottery to be made available. I would remind the Minister, and the House, that this is the committee who have been given the responsibility of prioritising lottery funding by the Taoiseach.
In the light of all these circumstances, in the light also of the fact that the application I made subsequent to the last debate was prioritised by the appropriate committee, was endorsed by this House, was endorsed massively by the Leaders of every political party and was then approved by Dublin Corporation for £50,000, it will be quite inexplicable to me in any terms, other than that of a curious mental block, if no money is made available for what this House has decided is a project of extraordinary merit.
