The Minister for Social Protection, Joan Burton (pictured), has published the Heads of a Bill which will allow people to change the sex registered on their birth certificates and other official documents without having to undergo “sex change” operations.

The legislation, entitled the Gender Recognition Bill 2013, is based largely on a report by the Gender Recognition Advisory Group, established by the last Government.

However, it differs in a number of key respects.

The initial report recommended that applicants be required to have lived with their preferred gender for at least two years.

It also recommended that an independent three member “Gender Recognition” Panel be established to assess applications.

Both of these recommendations are absent from the new legislation. Instead, the application process for gender recognition will be administrative via the Department of Social Protection instead of through an expert panel.

Instead of having to specify that they have been living with their “acquired gender” for a specific period of time prior to their application, applicants will be required to make a statutory self-declaration by the applicant that they intend to live permanently in the new gender.

Applicants, however, will not be required to undergo a ‘sex change’ operation, meaning they would not have to have the sexual organs of the sex into which they were born removed.

Instead, they will merely be required to supply validation by the primary treating physician that the person has transitioned or is transitioning to the acquired gender.

Applicants must also be over 18 and they must not be in a subsisting marriage or civil partnership.

The bill sets out that a person whose gender has been legally recognised would be entitled to marry a person of the opposite sex, or to enter a civil partnership with a person of the same sex.

Other countries have different requirements. For example, Germany requires that a person undergo a sex change operation before their official documentation will be changed.

The proposed Irish law will be modeled on the UK law which is among the most liberal in Europe.

Minister Burton said she was “delighted” to publish this General Scheme of the Bill

She said that the legislation showed “that this Government is prepared to resolve issues left unaddressed for far too long”.