Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan has bowed to public cries and has banned controversial US Pastor Steven Anderson from entering the country.
The fundamentalist preacher was due to speak in Dublin at an event on May 26 but Mr Flanagan has signed an exclusion order in the “interests of public policy”.
Confirming the decision, Mr Flanagan said: “I have signed the exclusion order under my executive powers in the interests of public policy.”
Mr Flanagan signed the exclusion order with immediate effect under Section 4 of the Immigration Act 1999 in respect of Pastor Anderson.
Online petitions were launched calling on the Government to ban fundamentalist American preacher Anderson from speaking in Dublin.
Anderson “has advocated exterminating LGBT+ people lauded the massacre in the Florida Gay Night Club of LGBT patrons and said he prayed nightly that US President Barack Obama would die!” He is also a Holocaust denier.
On April 5 last, launching a petition opposing the preacher’s plan to speak in Dublin this month, it said “the notorious anti-gay Pastor” wanted “to come to Ireland, on an invitation from Northern Irish Baptist Preacher Stuart Houston to evangelise Dublin on May 26th.”
