Employees outraged over Irish power company’s pro-trans policy

Female employees have urged Ireland’s Electricity Supply Board (ESB) to stop allowing men to use women’s changing rooms.

A group of women in senior positions at the organisation, who also represent junior employees, have criticised management for ignoring staff concerns and failing to fulfil a pledge to install more “private facilities”.

Currently, ESB’s policy requires all managers and team members to “support the right of all employees to access toilet, shower, and changing facilities which match their gender identity”. However, it has rowed back on its diktat that all to employees must use ‘preferred pronouns’.

‘Traumatic’

One member of the group told the Irish Mail on Sunday: “We were stonewalled. We tried to get up as far as the Chief Executive, Paddy Hayes. He referred it back to HR. They’re basically saying, ‘This is what we want, we don’t care.'”

Another explained that in the head office, the female changing room is in the basement, requiring women to walk through “three locked doors and long corridors to get in there. So you’re in a locked room, through three swiped doors in the basement with your clothes off.”

“There are women that have been in all sorts of traumatic situations being put in that position and they’re just not using facilities.”

The policy not only applies in Ireland but throughout the rest of the company based in the UK and abroad.

€1.5 million

Last month, Equality Minister Norma Foley announced €1.5m in new money pursuant to 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 has 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’.