Schools are terrified of getting things wrong where transgender students are concerned. Not because they are afraid of another Enoch Burke haunting the gates of their school, or worried about legal consequences, but because this small cohort of students includes many who are vulnerable.
In this context, it is hard to describe how irresponsible it was, and how unfair to schools, to publish a guide claiming it was obligatory to use preferred pronouns and to allow students access to single-sex spaces of their preferred gender. Know Your Rights, produced by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties in partnership with the Transgender Equality Network Ireland (TENI) and ShoutOut, cost €18,500, funding provided by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. Given that an additional €18,500 would be transformative for many schools, particularly primary schools, using it instead to spread misinformation and apprehension among teaching staff was egregious.
The Department of Education, which rarely issues clarifications, confirmed that no such legal obligations exist.
The department has not issued guidelines on transgender students since 2016. These guidelines are under review by Maynooth University, but the landscape has changed greatly since then. The UK Cass Review is central to that change. Not only does the Know Your Rights guide not reference it, but it also acts as if it never happened.
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The Cass Review was an independent report commissioned by NHS England to evaluate gender identity services for children and young people, following a surge in referrals. The exponential increase came primarily from adolescent girls. The review states that: “There is a greater complexity of presentation with high levels of [neurodivergence] and/or co-occurring mental health issues and a higher prevalence than in the general population of adverse childhood experiences”, and of children in the care of local authorities. Research cited in the review suggests that transgender and gender-diverse people are three to six times more likely to be autistic. The review pointed out the dangers of “overshadowing” – that is, ignoring the complexity of issues with which young people may present and focusing only on gender distress.
It also suggested that social transitioning – that is, using a different name and pronouns and presenting as a preferred gender – is not a neutral act. Social transition is an active clinical intervention with potential long-term psychological effects.
[ Transgender care waiting list to close due to resource pressuresOpens in new window ]
When students present with gender distress, schools desperately want to do what is best for them. But schools are not qualified or resourced to deal with the complexity of the issues that may be involved.
While transgender students are a particular concern, the numbers are small.
But there has been a substantial increase in rates of mental health problems generally among children and adolescents. These include much higher levels of anxiety and depression, and a rise in young people presenting with eating disorders, tics and body dysmorphic disorder.
This overall increase in mental distress manifests in many ways, including in chronic absenteeism and school avoidance, which, as the ESRI has pointed out, is now worryingly high, particularly among poorer students. More than a quarter of students in Deis post-primary schools missed 20 or more days, compared with 19 per cent for non-Deis schools.
Schools are constantly dealing with new challenges – for example, what’s known as “‘shipping”. This is when bizarre romantic relationship combinations are created for entertainment value on ‘ship accounts (an abbreviation of relationship) on social media platforms such as TikTok. Students then vote on them. They might be student-staff pairs, or first years with sixth years. But it can rapidly descend into cyberbullying. Both deepfake and unsolicited sexual imagery are also rampant in schools.
Meanwhile, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services are overwhelmed. There were 15,257 referrals to Community Camhs up to the end of last November, a 10.8 per cent increase on the same period in 2024. The waiting list to access Camhs was 2,755 in December 2020. The total number on the waiting list at the end of November was 4,375, with 590 children waiting for more than 12 months. Although the backlog has shrunk slightly since April 2025, despite rising referrals, each of these figures represents not just a young person but a family in distress. An advocacy group, Families for Reform of Camhs, presented to the Oireachtas Health Committee during the week. Hannah Ní Ghiolla Mhairtín told the committee that children with suicidal ideation and self-harm are being turned away from Camhs without any discussion or their child being met.
Teachers generally become educators because they want their students to thrive. Sadly, teachers themselves are suffering from burnout and poor mental health. DCU published research conducted with 1,000 teachers last March. Over the previous year, 28 per cent of teachers rated their mental health as “poor” or “very poor”. Forty-two per cent could not see themselves pursuing teaching long-term.
All of this is happening against a background of significant curricular change, with a new primary curriculum and reform of the entire senior cycle in progress at post-primary. The pressure on schools is simply unsustainable. That is why it is so disappointing when well-financed bodies breach teachers’ trust by issuing guidelines that are not accurate and not helpful.
