A major investigation [1] by the Sunday Independent [2] has revealed that senior doctors in the National Gender Service (NGS) warned [3] the HSE in 2019 that it would face a wave of patients who would regret medical gender reassignments due to the poor level of care given to Irish children by the Tavistock clinic in the UK.
Paul Moran, a consultant psychiatrist at the NGS which treats over-16s in Loughlinstown, and his colleagues set out their concerns over Tavistock’s “unsafe” practices in writing and at a number of meetings since 2019.
The Tavistock clinic, which operated a satellite service in Crumlin children’s hospital from 2014 to 2020, is still getting Irish patients referred to it despite plans to close it due to a recent damning report from Dr Hillary Cass.
She found Tavistock clinicians felt pressurised into “affirming” children’s gender changes and prescribing puberty blockers and hormones without proper assessment. Dr Moran told the Sunday Independent he fears the HSE is “ideologically committed” to hormone-based care for children “which is wrong and unsafe” given growing concerns puberty blockers can have detrimental health effects on developing children.