Earlier this morning, GCN reported that This Is Me, a national grassroots campaign advocating for safe, accessible, best practice standards for care to be provided to transgender people in Ireland, staged a sit-in at the Department of Health building on Baggot Street.
The sit-in was in demand of the meeting that Minister for Health, Simon Harris TD has promised the campaigners on multiple occasions over the past 13 months.
Speaking at the sit-in, Noah Halpin, founder of This Is Me said “We have played political niceties for well over a year now, but there comes a time when patience wears thin. Simon Harris has agreed to meet with us on multiple occasions, through multiple channels and he has not yet followed through on this commitment. Trans-specific healthcare in Ireland is at a crisis point. And this is being largely ignored. People are dying because of this. We have viable solutions.”
We have been visited by multiple radio stations and phoned by multiple publications.
Please share these stories and news clips. Keep the pressure on.
We are now 2hrs & 20mins in and committed to stay until given a time, date and location of promised meeting with @SimonHarrisTD pic.twitter.com/8wluk3H4B5— ThisIsMe Campaign (@ThisIsMeIreland) April 11, 2019
At 1 pm this afternoon, the This Is Me Campaign announced that Simon Harris has officially agreed to a meeting and has set a time and date to meet the activists.
@ThisIsMeIreland tweeted “Good news! Simon Harris has agreed to meet with the This Is Me Campaign and has given us a confirmed time, date and location in the very near future. We look forward to meeting with him and discussing viable solutions to improve transgender healthcare in Ireland. #MeetThisIsMe”
“A huge thank you to members of the trans community, our allies, family & friends who have supported us this morning, your support got us to this point.”
A huge thank you to members of the trans community, our allies, family & friends who have supported us this morning you’re support got us to this point. #MeetThisIsMe pic.twitter.com/7rh6FrpiZF
— ThisIsMe Campaign (@ThisIsMeIreland) April 11, 2019
The plans for the meeting are to discuss transgender healthcare in Ireland, to highlight the crisis that this area of healthcare is currently under and discuss viable solutions with those directly affected, with lived experienced and extensive knowledge in the area.
In a report by the Irish Commission for Human Rights and Equality, dated April 2017, it was stated that transgender healthcare in Ireland is in violation of the European Social Charter and that trans healthcare in Ireland has “inadequate provision of services and that treatment is not guaranteed in practice.”
© 2019 GCN (Gay Community News). All rights reserved.
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