Fridae

Campaigners staged a mock trial of the National Gender Service outside Ireland’s parliament on 10 November. The street theatre was aimed at the people designing a new model of care. Transgress the NGS, the group behind the Dublin protest, wants people to be able to turn to primary care for gender healthcare.

The Health Service Executive says it is developing a model that will set out how gender healthcare is delivered. For the protesters, the question is where someone can go for help and how much say they get in their own care. They are calling for an informed-consent approach, in which a patient makes treatment decisions with a clinician after discussing the benefits and risks.

Two organisations left the working group on 2 September and explained why in October. Trans Healthcare Action said the process had fallen short of its stated commitments to inclusion and to clinical evidence. The Professional Association for Trans Health Ireland said the draft did not reflect the service it wanted to help build.

Transgender Equality Network Ireland stayed in the process. It said it met ministers with LGBT Ireland and Belong To Youth Services and asked for a new draft led by primary care. In its 4 November account, the network said Minister of State Mary Butler agreed on the need for a new draft. The HSE’s public programme page still describes the model as being developed.