Simon Harris, the Minister for Health, has asked HSE officials on a steering committee developing transgender services to examine the requirement for people with gender dysphoria to have a psychiatric assessment before embarking on transgender surgery or hormonal interventions [1].
In 2015, the Govt adopted one of the most radical gender-changing laws in the world that enabled people to change their legal sex simply on foot of a self-declaration. However, medical practice in the country required psychiatric assessment prior to effecting any transgender treatments. This may now change.
Meanwhile, doctors at the National Gender Service at St Columcille’s Hospital have warned that the steering committee is basing its work on an “unsafe” model of care.
In May, Harris appointed to the steering committee Noah Halpin, an activist campaigning against psychiatric assessment and in favour of the recommendations of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (Wpath), which places a strong emphasis on patients’ self-declaration as the basis for treatment. In an email from June released under freedom of information law, the health department said Harris “wishes to ensure the concerns which Noah Halpin brought to his attention are examined”. In particular, the minister’s “expectation” was that the committee would review implementation of the transgender model of care to “ensure compliance with Wpath is happening in practice”.