Trans activists push Irish Govt to endorse radical agenda

Activists in the Republic of Ireland have urged the Health Minister to disregard the Cass Review and provide ‘affirming healthcare’ for trans people.

The group, Gender Rebels, has started a petition and written a letter to Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill to coincide with the ten-year anniversary of Ireland’s Gender Recognition Act (GRA), calling the promises made at the time “unfulfilled”.

Since 2015, over 18s have been allowed to change their legal sex merely by self-declaration. The law even extends ‘sex swaps’ to 16-year-olds – subject to parental consent and medical approval.

Gender Rebels

The letter claims that “the promise of dignity for transgender people in Ireland remains profoundly unfulfilled”, adding that the “legal right to recognition has not been met with the fundamental human right to healthcare”.

It dismisses the landmark 2024 Cass Review as “poorly supported” and accuses the government of using it as a “pretext for paralysis”.

It points instead to a report from the Transgender Equality Network Ireland (TENI) from 2013 which backs the controversial and contested claim that ‘gender affirming care’ decreases the risk of suicide in gender-confused people.

The letter concludes: “We demand the creation of a National Transgender Healthcare Taskforce, co-designed with the trans community, to establish a decentralised, community-based model of care founded on informed consent, as recommended by the World Health Organisation.”

Restore clarity

In May, Aontú Senator Sarah O’Reilly urged the Government to heed the UK Supreme Court’s judgment on biological sex and repeal the GRA, which she said allows gender self-identification “without any medical or biological basis”.

She added: “The truth is that biological sex is real and it matters. Protecting women’s spaces is not about exclusion or hatred; it is about upholding justice, fairness and common sense for 50 per cent of the population.”

It was time, she argued, to repeal the GRA and so “restore legal clarity, protect women’s sex-based rights and ensure that truth and not ideology shapes our laws”.