10 years on from the passage of Ireland’s landmark Gender Recognition Act 2015, trans rights activists are demanding reform in transgender healthcare, calling the situation a “public health emergency” in a powerful petition to Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill.
The petition, written by the grassroots activist group Gender Rebels, condemns what it describes as the “systemic collapse” of transgender healthcare in Ireland. Marking the upcoming 10th anniversary of the Act being on July 22, 2025, the letter states, “The promise of dignity and recognition for transgender people in Ireland remains profoundly unfulfilled.”
While the law allows people to legally self-declare their gender, campaigners argue that this symbolic recognition means little without access to medical care that allows them to live in that gender. “The legal right to recognition has not been met with the fundamental human right to healthcare,” the letter states.
The group points to the de facto denial of care within the state-run National Gender Service (NGS), where waiting lists now stretch over a decade. This centralised model is described as “unfit for purpose” and directly at odds with the government’s own healthcare strategy, Sláintecare, which champions universal and community-based healthcare access.
The situation is even more stark for young trans people. The petition states, “For young people, there is a complete absence of any public healthcare pathway, abandoning a vulnerable generation.”
The human cost, the petition notes, is devastating. Citing HSE-supported research conducted by TENI in 2013, the activists reveal that while 81% of transgender people contemplate suicide before accessing transition-related care, this figure drops to just 4% post transition.
“The State’s inaction is causing measurable harm,” the letter warns, with many resorting to unregulated online hormones or costly treatment abroad. Even then, the NGS reportedly pressures local GPs to refrain from providing necessary follow-up care, including basic blood testing, a policy the group says has yet to receive any official clarification.
The letter also accuses the HSE of refusing to meaningfully engage the transgender community in shaping their own services, despite public commitments to stakeholder involvement.
“This failure is compounded by the HSE’s systematic refusal to engage with the transgender community,” the petition states, calling such neglect a breach of its own healthcare guidelines.
Concluding the petition with a call for immediate, structural reform to transgender healthcare, Gender Rebels demands that the Minister establish a National Transgender Healthcare Taskforce that is “co-designed with the trans community” and built around a decentralised, informed consent model, a standard endorsed by the World Health Organization.
“We petition you to immediately commit to dismantling the current failed system,” the petition reads. “A decade of delay is a decade of harm. The time of repeated acknowledgement has long passed; the time for decisive action is now. We seek not just change, but justice.”
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To sign the petition, click here.
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