Northern Ireland’s Health Minister has been widely criticised over his decision to revive the Province’s ‘gender identity’ service for adults and children.
After MLA Mike Nesbitt officially announced £806,000 in funding for Belfast’s Brackenburn clinic, The Christian Institute warned it was completely unsuitable to refer children to its services, and Tavistock whistleblower Dr David Bell called it a step “backwards” in the care of gender-confused children.
The news comes as a freedom of information (FOI) response revealed that children as young as five were referred to the Brackenburn between 2014 and 2024.
‘Deeply inappropriate’
Nesbitt claimed the new money is necessary to “revive” the flagging fortunes of the clinic, and that he is committed to extending “gender identity service provision for children, young people and adults in Northern Ireland”.
But the Institute’s James Kennedy countered: “Referring young children to ‘gender identity services’ is deeply inappropriate.
“It is entirely normal for children to express imaginative ideas about their identity as part of growing up and the last thing they need is to be medicalised for it.”
He warned against repeating the Tavistock’s mistakes, where leading paediatrician Baroness Cass found that many interventions were driven more by ideology than evidence, placing many children on a path of irreversible, lifelong medical treatment.
Damaging ideology
Dr David Bell, who exposed the poor treatment practices at the Tavistock, told the News Letter that he believed “specialist gender clinics for children and adolescents are unnecessary and harmful”.
He explained: “once you send the child to a gender clinic, you close the door on exploration and start the child on a pathway that will in all likelihood be very damaging to their development”.
The experienced psychiatrist added: “Specialist gender clinics for children are, as Cass identified, part of the problem and most definitely not part of the solution.”
Dr Bell pointed out that even some trans activists had stopped saying “that children are born in the wrong body”. The very idea, he said, was “absurd”.
‘Madness’
A Belfast Health Trust FOI response has revealed that 438 under-18s were accepted onto the Province’s Gender Identity Development Service’s books from 2014 to 2024.
Although the Trust refused to divulge exact figures to the News Letter, it did indicate that between three and twelve of these referrals were five-years-old.
Doug Beattie, a former leader of Nesbitt’s Ulster Unionist Party, commented: “5 year olds believe in Santa clause, the Easter bunny….. why on earth would GPs refer them & Belfast trust accept them in gender clinic. Madness.”
Controversial LGBT organisation The Rainbow Project which announced the relaunch of the gender identity service ahead of the Minister, welcomed the news. But DUP spokeswoman Diane Dodds accused Nesbitt of exposing Northern Ireland to “unproven ideology” while the rest of the UK “moves to tighten protections”.
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