While every Dublin Pride is cause for celebration and 2018’s was no different, there were a lot of legitimate complaints about the parade route once again being shunted to the back streets of the city, leaving the main thoroughfares clear. It was disheartening to watch the colourful march of our community’s biggest day of the year, which brought 60,000 people’s worth of business to Dublin, having to come to a stop every so often just so a Luas could pass.

Compare this to what happened when Pope Francis popped over for his contentious visit and basically shut the capital down. Those viewing on television clearly saw the Popemobile zip down an uncrowded O’Connell Street and around a Dame Street which has looked busier on certain Saturday nights, with obvious sizeable gaps between the onlookers.

Here we clearly had favouritism being shown to the head of an institution which has unarguably damaged the lives of generations of our nation, paying a visit which not only cost the taxpayer millions but meant a massive loss of earnings to retailers throughout the city. The double standards are infuriating.

Dublin City Council insists it would be too expensive for Dublin Pride to use the city’s main thoroughfares. But we were never a community to sit in silence and be told what we could and couldn’t have.

Panti received great traction when she announced on social media that no matter what, come the last Saturday in June, she’d “be in the middle of the street where god herself intended me to be”.

Yours truly, GCN has launched an online petition demanding the LGBTQI+ community is not just shown respect, but taken seriously as a people who will be heard. It reads: “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”.

Oh, and it’s not finished there – “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, commemorating the liberation of LGBT people at Stonewall on the last Saturday in June 1969.”

As we go to press, the number of signatories on the petition is hovering just over the 8,000 mark. We can do better than that. Add your name to the list and let’s get our parade back on our main streets in our capital. Sign with Pride.

You can find the petition ‘Dublin Pride Should March On Dublin’s Main Streets’ online at Change.org