The Irish Government has re-committed to outlawing so-called conversion therapy.
Under its National LGBTIQ+ Inclusion Strategy II, the coalition promised to ensure a ‘conversion practices’ ban is operational before the end of 2026. The previous version of the Strategy also supported a ban.
Last year, the previous Government pushed back its plans for a new law, admitting that the process was fraught with legal difficulties.
Activists routinely conflate abuses that are criminal under existing law with legitimate, everyday activities which cannot be criminalised, such as conversations between parents and children about sexuality or gender identity. It has proven extremely difficult.
A new Draft Programme for Government was agreed in January 2025, following the November general election.
It fell short of pledging to “enact legislation to ban conversion practices”, as contained in the manifesto of the largest party Fianna Fáil, and instead merely promised to “advance legislation”. Coalition partner Fine Gael had pledged to “Support the National LGBTI+ Inclusion Strategy to 2028”.
But now the Government has declared, as a strategic objective, to ensure that legislation “to ban conversion practices is enacted and commenced” by next year at the latest.
In pursuit of its pro-LGBT agenda, it also pledged to set up a working group on “providing legal recognition” for people who self-identify as ‘non-binary’.
In 2023, an official study found that there was little or no evidence of conversion therapy in Ireland.
Academics behind the report, commissioned by the Irish Government, said they “were unsuccessful in finding any research literature that was published in Ireland” on the issue. Their survey found fewer than one in twelve respondents claimed to have been subject to some form of conversion practice in the last 30 years.
Groups including LGBT Ireland, Gay Project, and Transgender Equality Network Ireland “provided guidance on the survey design, the interview guide, dissemination of the survey and participant recruitment for the interviews”.
A poll carried out for The Christian Institute in November of the same year showed that voters wanted the Government to focus on healthcare and housing, not a new law on conversion therapy.
Earlier this year, freedom of information (FOI) requests submitted by The Christian Institute revealed that Northern Ireland’s Health and Social Care Trusts have received almost no complaints about conversion practices, despite plans for a new law.
Under Alliance MLA Eóin Tennyson’s Member’s Bill, parents and church leaders could face unlimited fines and up to seven years in prison for being involved in so-called conversion practices — including stopping their children from ‘changing gender’.
James Kennedy, NI Policy Officer for the Institute, stated that the FOI responses confirm “what we have long said: there is simply no need for a law on so-called conversion therapy”.
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