Trans healthcare in Ireland is “consistently ranked as the worst in Europe, with over 2,000 people on a waiting list for healthcare”, Labour health spokeswoman Marie Sherlock told the Dáil as she warned of rising hostility and attacks.
Ten years after the passage of the Gender Recognition Act, young people have to wait more than four years before they get their first appointment with the National Gender Service and are “self-medicating on the black market”, she said.
Introducing a Labour Party motion on trans healthcare, Ms Sherlock described the provision of services as “an absolute mess” and “non-existent” in many areas. “We desperately and urgently need a reset in how those services are provided in this country,” she said.
“The stakes are too high for too many trans people, the wait time of four and a half years makes them feel like there is no service.”
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Her party colleague Ged Nash claimed “doctors are judging patients when they should be caring for them” as he highlighted the case of a trans woman who transitioned nine years ago.
When she moved home, a new GP “simply refused to continue prescribing HRT unless she saw an endocrinologist, despite her having a stable and long-term prescription”.
The endocrinologist in turn “demanded unredacted psychiatric reports from almost a decade ago”.
Mr Nash said it was not an isolated case and “barrier after barrier was put in front of this trans woman” who is “considering sourcing her hormones online with all of the risk and lack of regulation that entails”.
Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill said she had previously criticised the division that “seemed to be seeping across from the United Kingdom”.
She recalled speaking to trans people “who told me the fearful things that were being touted at that time, namely that people would come into changing rooms, for example, and dress up as men.
“We all know the sheer nonsense that a man would dress up as a woman and come into a changing room for the purposes of attacking me, as though with all of the conversations we have had about femicide in this room we ever needed a man to dress up to attack a woman.”
The Minister said “I always regretted that such attitudes seeped over here.”
Labour TD Eoghan Kenny hit out at “scaremongering” and criticised the “nonsense” from Independent Ireland “when we raise trans issues”. But during heated exchanges Independent Ireland TD Richard O’Donoghue said people had made assumptions about him and he called on TDs on the left to “have the courtesy to shut your mouth”.
He said: “I have been heckled in this House, people saying I’m anti-gay and anti-this.”
Calling to be treated with respect, he said “I am a parent and a grandparent. I’ve a son that’s gay.” He told TDs “you don’t know me but you make assumptions”.
He said “there are an awful lot of people out there who are scared and lack understanding” and it was “my job here is to help them regardless of whether I agree with them or not”.
“As a doctor their job is to help people whether they agree with them or not. Education on this is key,” he said.
