Following last week’s report on a presentation given by Chris Rowan of BeLongTo to people working for the Revenue section of the Department of Finance, Gript can reveal more details on the engagement of various state Departments and bodies with both BeLongTo and the Transgender Equality Network (TENI.)
Readers will recall that one of the queries which we submitted to Revenue had been in relation to what payment if any had been made to BeLongTo for the presentation which as we reported featured some controversial and perhaps even inaccurate statements of fact.
Responses to a number of Parliamentary Questions submitted by Rural Independent TD for Laois/Offaly, Carol Nolan, shed some light on the engagement of the state with these advocacy NGOs.
Minister Roderic O’Gorman’s Department had not received any direct briefings but referred the query to various bodies coming under the aegis of the Department for response.
One of those entities, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission wrote to Deputy Nolan to inform her that in 2021, the IHREC had paid TENI €500 for a training session.
The Commission is also engaged with both TENI and BeLongTo on the pressing issue of “Trans Healthcare” and is engaged in grant aiding BeLongTo as part of some other project to do with NGOs “working to progress equality and human rights.”
In response to a similar enquiry, the Department of Finance said that while the Department had not hosted any briefings from either BeLongTo or TENI that staff had participated in a talk on “gender pronouns” hosted by BeLongTo in June 2022.
The Department of Finance has had a number of staff partake in a Department of Public Expenditure NDP Delivery and Reform (DPENDR) talk on ‘Gender Pronouns’ hosted by BelongTo on 21st of June 2022 in conjunction with PRIDE Week.
TENI and BeLongTo had also provided briefings to the Central Bank and the Investor Compensation Company DAC.
Why either body really needs to be spending its time “Learning to be an ally,” or about “Gender Expression and Identity” rather than making sure that the state does not run out of money, and that investors in failed businesses are compensated, must remain a mystery. At least those briefings did not add to the National Debt as they were apparently free.
Bizarrely, the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) which looks after that debt has targets “in the area of inclusion and identity” which embraces “Gender Matters.” Which presumably why a small part of the National Treasury, to the tune of €4,000, was awarded to TENI for a “a remote information session on NTMA Workplace Gender Transition Guidelines and NTMA Gender Identity & Expression Policy.”
That was in 2021, and so before TENI had its generous taxpayer funding – amounting to €508,000 in 2021 – suspended over failure on several occasions to submit audited accounts to the HSE.
Among other issues were that in 2017 TENI had paid €6,000 to two of its own directors in consultancy fees that they failed to include in their accounts for that year. Happily, TENI has been allowed back to the ever-expanding trough in which the advocacy NGOs wet his/her/their beak.
HSE funding has been restored and while some income is down, readers will note that they managed to more than double the amount they earned from “training” folk in 2022 as compared to 2021. Presumably, this is the pot in which the briefings to the public servants you pay ends up.
The Department of Finance also informed Deputy Nolan that the Office of the Revenue Commissioners had been the beneficiary of two briefings from BeLongTo in 2022 and 2023. I am assuming that the latest of these “about the lived experience of LGBTQ+ young people today in Ireland” is the one which we were at, and which cost the taxpayer – apart from the lost time of the Revenue persons (not necessarily a bad thing you might think) – €1,000, excluding VAT.
The Department of Public Expenditure confirmed that it had paid out a total of €3,050 to BeLongTo for four separate events. One of these, held in June 2022, was on “ProNouns.” In June, they paid €1,250 to hold a “celebrating Pride, LGBTQ+ workshop,” And on March 29 last, they hosted an event that was part of “Celebrating Trans Day of Visibility.”
In case you were wondering what Trans Day of Visibility is, it is the invention of American trans activists and was officially opened in 2021 by Joe Biden. This nonsense cost the Irish taxpayer €800. I am not sure whether this includes VAT.