Seanad debates

Wednesday, 21 January 2015

Gender Recognition Bill 2014: Second Stage

 

1:00 pm

Photo of Katherine ZapponeKatherine Zappone (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will be done. They are also required to submit a certificate in writing of a medical practitioner confirming transition. The criteria inextricably links medical treatment with a legal right. By defining medical practitioners as a psychiatrist or endocrinologist who must perform a medical evaluation which, as others have stated, is not defined in legislation, it runs the risk of pathologising the community by requiring a de facto diagnosis or worth and, further, as Broden Giambrone stated this morning, it stigmatises them and they need a third party to sign off on their identity. The Private Members' Bill I published, in 2013, with Senators van Turnhout and Mac Conghail, promoted the self-determination of trans people in a simple and legally robust statutory declaration process. That is what they are doing in other countries where best practice is being observed.

In Ireland, we have fallen behind the evolution of modern society in this respect by failing for so many years to legislate for the recognition of those people who do not conform to the traditional binary model of gender and those who regard the biological sex into which they are born as not their known or felt gender. All they wish is to have a law that allows them to exercise the human right to determine their own identity. We have an opportunity now to legislate for that based on international practice and our visitors' fantastic advocacy and example. I hope the Minister takes that opportunity to show the trans community, and the international community that has long called for Ireland to fulfil its obligations under the ECHR, that in Ireland, in 2015, we have a society that accepts, recognises and protects all our citizens.

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