Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)

I start by thanking my colleague, Deputy Sherlock, for bringing forward this important motion on transgender healthcare.

Over the last number of months, I have met with a number of transgender groups that are focused on highlighting the issues they are facing in the community regarding access to safe and effective healthcare in Ireland. I thank these groups for their input into the Labour Party motion today. This is about respect. This is about helping people. When I speak with these groups, their basic ask is for access to safe healthcare. Even something as simple as a blood test is out of reach for the trans community. I have had people contact my office over the unfair treatment they face in trying to access a blood test. This is due to a direction from the national gender service, NGS, which we are told is instructing GPs to not carry out blood tests for their trans patients. This is simply discriminatory and will put the trans community at risk.

I also want to highlight an issue with the rollout of the free HRT scheme. While this is a great initiative, inequalities have arisen in misunderstandings of the scheme. There seems to be a discrepancy in the scheme as some trans women have reported accessing menopause products while others have not been so lucky. However, those who have accessed these products are now reporting differing accounts, being given free HRT one month and being asked to pay the next. There is no consistency. I ask the Minister for Health to provide some clarity and guidance on this.

At the very core of this motion is the need to provide safe and effective healthcare services that are patient informed. Many in the trans community do not feel listened to by the Government and they certainly do not feel listened to by the NGS. We need to have a new approach to health that is patient informed, uses the patient experience and is entirely centred on that experience. We need a new model of trans healthcare that is designed not just for the community, but for the members of the trans community and their families. We must stand with the trans community today and every day, as they have stood with us on many societally defining moments in the past, like the repeal of the eighth amendment and marriage equality. We must remember that there is no LGB without the T.

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