On Saturday, May 11, activists from several community groups staged a powerful street theatre protest outside the HSE offices, calling attention to the failings of the trans healthcare system in Ireland.

The protest was organised by Transgress the NGS, an organisation campaigning for a better healthcare system in Ireland. The organisation is specifically advocating for the National Gender Service (NGS), which is currently the sole public provider of trans healthcare in the country, to drop its policy of advising GPs not to provide blood tests and hormone replacement therapy prescriptions to their trans patients.

The street theatre performance staged last Saturday saw activists portray scenarios and problems that trans people often face when trying to access healthcare services in Ireland.

Such problems, highlighted numerous times by trans activists in the past, include having to wait over a decade to access public trans healthcare, facing intrusive psychiatric questioning and experiencing obstacles to access even basic services through GPs. As shown by a report published by Transgender Europe (TGEU) in 2022, Ireland has the worst trans healthcare standards among the 27 EU member-states.

The protest was only one of the many initiatives organised by Transgress the NGS in the last 18 months to draw attention to the issue and attempt to meet with Department of Health or HSE officials. Earlier this year, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly said in the Dáil that he would meet with trans groups to discuss the community’s needs regarding trans healthcare. However, the Minister hasn’t followed through on this commitment yet.

 

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One of the organisers of the street theatre protest, Jupiter Cassidy, said that the “campaign has been bringing our concerns to the NGS for more than a year — from holding phone and email pickets to protests to occupations — and have had hundreds join us in that action from across Ireland.

“Still, we’ve gotten no response to our requests for self-determined, safe, and accessible healthcare, and specifically, our demand that the NGS stop discouraging GPs from providing the support they are legally able to in the midst of years-long waiting lists,” Cassidy added.

Fiadh Tubridy, a spokesperson for Transgress the NGS, explained that “currently the NGS has a policy of pressuring GPs not to provide blood tests and HRT prescriptions in cases where they are accessing healthcare outside the NGS’s totally non-functional and inhumane system.

“This is unacceptable because it puts trans people at increased risk of serious health problems. We are demanding that the Minister of Health and HSE intervene and ensure this policy is dropped immediately,” Tubridy said.

Jupiter Cassidy concluded by saying: “With Saturday’s action, we decided to take our message to the streets with a level of drama they can’t ignore — telling the story of how trans healthcare is failing us and inviting the audience to help us summon up a future where we have what we need instead.”