JUSTICE MINISTER CHARLIE Flanagan has made an order banning a controversial anti-LGBT figure from speaking in Ireland this month.

Pastor Steven Anderson, who founded a Baptist church in Arizona in the US, was set to deliver a sermon in Dublin on 26 May.

Anderson has engaged in anti-LGBT+ rhetoric and has been the subject of an exclusion order in the UK, as well as a ban from the 26 Schengen area countries in Europe.

Minister Flanagan last night confirmed he had signed the exclusion order banning the preacher.

“I have signed the exclusion order under my executive powers in the interests of public policy,” he said. 

Flanagan has the power to make such an order under Section 4 of the Immigration Act 1999.

A petition online from campaign group Changing Attitudes Ireland calling for such a ban had amassed more than 14,000 signatures.

The group said Anderson “advocated exterminating LGBT+ people” and “lauded the massacre in the Florida Gay Night Club of LGBT patrons” in 2016.

A tweet from LGBT+ Ireland thanked the minister for taking this course of action. 

“We are very thankful for your decision today to ban Steven Anderson from Ireland,” it said.

Anderson has previously said he spent nights praying for the death of former US president Barack Obama.