A FIANNA Fail county councillor has revealed how he felt forced to ‘come out’ due to the his sexuality being the subject of constant gossip.

South Roscommon councillor John Keogh announced himself as a member of the LGBT community in a lengthy post on Facebook to “comprehensively shut down the rumour mills”.

2 Fianna Fail councillor John Keogh

The councillor said he made the decision in part due to rumours he heard regarding his heterosexual friends who kept his company.

He also said “it would be naive to think that prejudice doesn’t exist, it does exist.”

He added: “I am fortunate to have very good friends, and by that I mean they accept me for who I am and I accept them for who they are.

“But at the same time I just didn’t like that people were going around speaking about my friends in manners in which they should be, throwing doubt in relation to the type of relationships they have and the fidelity they have to their partners.”

The Fianna Fail politician said another factor in his decision to discuss his sexual orientation was the mental hardship that some young people face in similar situations.

He said: “Young men and women do suffer from mental anguish when they are facing this issue about their sexual orientation.

"And that’s unfortunately a serious issue.

“There are people who have contemplated suicide, the amount of attempted suicides that have happened in the last year, people who are grappling with mental health issues, and we would be foolish to think that a person’s sexual orientation is not a factor at times in relation to some of those suicides.”

In his social media statement the Roscommon Cllr said: “Over the last couple of years my sexual orientation has become a topic of much discussion for some people.

"As a private citizen, I will never really fully understand why this has been so.

“The fact that I am a public representative should be completely irrelevant also.

"I have long believed that we all are born equal and that we should live in a society of equals where no person should ever suffer prejudice because of their race, creed, gender, sexual orientation or any other reason.

2 Cllr Keogh says he has never been ashamed of his sexual preference and is only coming out to protect his friends from gossip

"A person’s private life should be exactly that, their private life.

“Whilst I have never really cared about whether people think I am straight, gay or bisexual, I have noticed that the issue of my sexual orientation has dominated some discussion and has become somewhat of a distraction.

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“I have never been ashamed of my sexual preference as it has helped shape the person that I am today.

"I would expect that in this day and age, this should really be a non-story but sadly we are not there yet.

"For that reason, I want to comprehensively shutdown the rumour mills, once and for all, by publicly coming out as a member of the LGBT community.”

He added that he hoped that by going public about his sexuality it will highlight the lack of commitment from this government and previous ones to properly fund mental health services.

In 2015, Roscommon–South Leitrim was the only constituency out of 43 to have a majority of voters vote against the same-sex referendum being enacted.