Bill seeks to bake ‘third gender’ into Irish law

The Dáil is to consider whether people who claim to be ‘non-binary’ should be formally recognised by the State.

Under TD Ruth Coppinger’s ‘Non-Binary and Intersex Recognition Bill’, adults will be entitled to have their ‘preferred gender’ marked as ‘X’ on a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC).

Government guidance states that once a GRC is issued “the gender of the person named on the certificate becomes for all purposes the preferred gender from that date forward”.

‘All gender identities’

According to the People Before Profit-Solidarity TD’s Private Member’s Bill, the ‘non-binary’ category is defined as “all gender identities other than male or female” and includes children born with a rare intersex condition.

The proposals would not only amend the Gender Recognition Act 2015, but also import ‘non-binary’ into all Acts of the Oireachtas, “outlaw discrimination” against “non-binary genders”, and allow death certificates to record a person’s sex as “X (unspecified/intersex/non-binary)”.

Introducing the Bill, Coppinger conceded that there are no “exact figures for the number of non-binary people in Ireland”. However, she went on to claim that “up to 10% and possibly more, of people are LGBTQI in surveys and at least one third would identify as non-binary from that category”.

The Bill now proceeds to Second Stage, where it will be debated.

Public money

In April, Equality Minister Norma Foley announced €1.5m in new money in pursuit of the Government’s “National LGBTIQ+ Inclusion Strategy”.

Under the grant scheme, organisations already in receipt of taxpayers’ money for work with the “LGBTIQ+ community” may apply for funding “to support new initiatives and to maintain and enhance existing services and initiatives”. New applicants may also access small grants for projects that promote LGBT “visibility and inclusion”.

As part of its LGBT strategy, the Government had already promised a ‘conversion practices’ ban before the end of 2026, and a working group on “providing legal recognition” for people who self-identify as ‘non-binary’.