Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

I support Deputy Ó Snodaigh's amendment. This is obviously a substantial and progressive change to our laws that we welcome, albeit with certain criticisms and reservations. It is new legislation so that is the idea for having a review as quickly as possible is to see how it will work and affect different groups of transgender people or to ensure any problems can be quickly ironed out and changed.

I will highlight a few issues and one relates to what we have just discussed. In one year, we should be able to examine this in a real way and see if anybody between 16 and 18 years of age managed to get a gender recognition certificate by going through the process of courts and medical examination. If they have not done so over the course of a year, would it illustrate a problem and mean that we should simply lower the age from 18 to 16? It is a concrete question and with the benefit of a year's experience, we would be able to review it. I accept the Government's commitment to resolve the forced divorce requirement but will it be done in a year? It is a vital issue and at least if there is to be a definite review in a year, it will force the Government of the day to confront that reality. If it has not been dealt with for some reason, it can be dealt with at that stage.

Other issues are not considered in the Bill and a review in a year would likely highlight the need to deal with them. For example, there is a question of an "X" gender, or those people who identify neither as male nor female. We have amendments on that later but it is likely we will not get to them because of the guillotine. A review is likely to highlight that as a major issue requiring amendment. Amendment No. 4 dealt with a residency requirement and after a year, we could see if it affects any groups of workers or students not in the country for a year but who seek, for whatever reason, a gender recognition certificate. Finally, we could see the impact of the legislation in education and whether further action should be taken. It is clear that in this case, we need a quicker review period than two years. The Minister of State has the right under the current wording to do it more quickly but it should be in law that this must happen within a year.

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