A new private Member’s Bill to allow people to have their birth certificates changed to recognise their preferred gender has been launched by Senator  Katherine Zappone.

The Bill if it became law would allow people to apply to the Civil Registrar to have their birth certificates changed. They would not have to undergo an operation or receive hormone treatment, nor would a medical specialist have to agree that they are a different gender from their physical gender.

The person would simply have to fill in a form stating what gender they believe themselves to be and declare their intention to live as that gender permanently and send it to the An tArd-Chláraitheoir or General Registrar.

The General Registrar could refuse the request but any refusal could be appealed by the applicant.

The Bill would mean that a person with male genital organs could be called a woman and a person with female genital organs a man.

Launching the Bill, Senator Zappone said: “I am painfully aware of the incredible injustice and discrimination that the transgender community in Ireland has had to endure for such a long time when their rights should have been recognised.  It is their bravery and determination that has inspired this bill. This bill seeks to ensure the dignity of transgender people and protect their right to self-determine their identity.”

Commenting on the desire of a person to live as a member of the opposite sex a group of doctors in a letter  to the Daily Telegraph in 2002, said: “The experience of many psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and psychotherapists working with transsexual patients is that they are individuals who, for complex reasons, need to escape from an intolerable psychological reality into a more comfortable fantasy. By attempting to live as a member of the opposite sex, they try to avoid internal conflict, which may otherwise prove to be too distressing.”

“Through years of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, some patients begin to understand the origins of their painful conflicting feelings and can find new ways of dealing with them, other than by trying to alter their bodies. The recent legal victory  [referring to a decision by the European Court of Human Rights] risks reinforcing a false belief that it is possible to actually change a person’s gender. It might also strengthen the view that the only solution to psychic pain is a legal or surgical one.”