Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I want to talk about intersex people, which is something I have learned a lot about since the start of consultations on this legislation. This Bill appears to fail intersex people, despite the fact that the Minister of State says it will be open to them.The Bill is more specific to the needs of transgender people, and provision for intersex people appears to be just added on. Based on what I have learned, I am not sure that this is adequate. "Intersex" is an umbrella term which refers to a variety of naturally occurring conditions where a person's biological sex characteristics, including genetic, hormonal or anatomical differences, are not typically male or female. The issue can be quite sad because sometimes people do not know they are intersex until, for example, they have fertility exploration and find out they have no womb. It may be the carrying out of an autopsy which results in the discovery that a person is intersex. It will not have been discovered at birth. Someone may have the XY chromosome. We would normally consider this person male but the person's hormone levels and physical body might be considered more typically female. Alternatively, a person may have XX chromosomes for a female, with high levels of oestrogen and low levels of testosterone, like most women, but may have testicular tissue instead of ovarian tissue. We are talking about quite a number of people. It occurs in 1% of the population.