New adult LGBTQ+ service opens in Cavan Town

Outcomers are launching their services for adult members of the LGBTQ community in the coming weeks in Cavan.

Spearheaded by Community Outreach Worker Paul Bardin, the focus is on “older members” of the community.

The service covers the north east - Louth, Meath Cavan and Monaghan - however this service will deliver in the latter two counties “first”.

The service will offer “more peer to peer support” with their first meeting taking place on Monday, November 11.

“It’s like a drop-in space, it’s a peer to peer group offering that support to older members of the LGBTQ community.”

The group is aimed at those in the thirty-plus age category who would recall when “it was a criminal offence to be a member of the LGBTQ community”, which was the case up until 1993.

“That group is where I’m targeting,” Paul explained.

Having grown up in Dublin, Paul described coming out in the capital “to be a bit of a privilege rather than rural Ireland”.

He moved to Carrickmacross around 18 years ago and noticed the presence of the LGBTQ community in rural Ireland “wouldn’t be as visible” compared to “the cities”.

Outcomers aims to bring awareness and visibility and create “that safe space for those members, and that belonging”.

Paul continued: “I moved up with somebody so I had a partner, I had the LGBT lifestyle moving up with me, so for me it was easier.”

For those who wish to attend, they can expect “a friendly space” to meet “somebody they may have something in common with other than just being LGBT”.

“It’s about people sharing their lived experiences in rural Ireland, what works for one might not necessarily work for another but it’s having that shared experience.

“Somebody who’s part of an ethnic minority, if they were to go home, you can be guaranteed there’d be somebody there who’s also of that ethnic minority.

“If you’re a member of the LGBTQ community and you go home, you’re not always guaranteed somebody at home will be a member,” he described, adding that “it’s about creating that peer to peer space”.

Taking place in Teach Oscail, Paul said “it’s a neutral doorway”.

“That person could be there for any reason.

“It’s not going to out anybody,” he assured

With a social group already rolled out in Castleblayney, this service is the first in Cavan since before COVID-19, when manager of Outcomers LGBTQ Community Centre in Dundalk Bernardine Quinn was one of the facilitators of the former service in the Breffni county. She described how the group used to meet at Breffni Integrated and experienced a decrease in numbers upon moving their meetings into the town.

“The first thing that happened was all of the older users fell away.”

Asked if this cohort of people still feel the need to hide, Bernardine replied: “Oh yeah.”

“Research shows that they do feel the need to hide,” she added. “A lot of older LGBTQ people who reach the age of having to go to a nursing home go back in the closet.

“We’ve heard stories of men visiting men in nursing homes and the staff thinking they were brothers and they were actually lifelong partners.

“It’s not necessarily because of the treatment of the nursing home or the treatment of the community, it is also their lived experience of having to hide it all their lives.”

She said people from “rural Ireland” left because of “the stigma or the shame”.

“They couldn’t stay at home in their local towns and come out and they moved away to New York, to London, to Dublin to all places like that and tried to live their lives.

“That has been the legacy for LGBT people in this country for a certain age group.

“Now we are trying to support some of those older people to come out and have a coffee and a chat.”