Sharon Keogan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am relieved that the UK has finally prohibited puberty blockers for minors. It is a bit late, but it is welcome news. Medically transitioning minors is the greatest medical mistreatment scandal on record. However, this travesty continues unchallenged in Ireland. Puberty blockers such as Lupron continue to be used for the medical castration of convicted rapists. Adjusting and amending the physical simply cannot erase the mind, biology and spirit of gender. We do an injustice as a society by not exploring the treatment of gender dysphoria beyond altering the body. The scale and volume at which the UK treated gender-dysphoric minors obviously exceeds our own. There is no need for us to undertake a study in the hopes we arrive at some politically expedient alternative in order to continue puberty blockers and other treatments. If the HSE is considering studying this matter, perhaps Ireland should pioneer and spearhead psychiatric and mental health studies on gender dysphoria. Let us treat the condition, not the symptoms. Let us help droves of young people and their families facing this sensitive and difficult condition with real medical assistance and not a lifetime subscription to pharmaceutical products, experimental surgeries and, most tragically of all, persistent suicide rates in gender transition surgeries. Gender dysphoria is real and the issue deserves vast evidence-based treatment. I hold the medical industry and the Minister for Health to the standards of the Hippocratic oath and call for an end to this tragic harm inflicting our youth.

On a separate and more important note, the mother and baby institutes payment scheme is now open for applications. I cannot believe this Government would demand photographic ID for people in their 80s and 90s. Can we write to the Minister as a matter of urgency today and ask him to accept old passports that could be used to verify their identity? Many of those people who will be claiming under this scheme will not have up-to-date passports. Could the Acting Leader write to the Minister today to see if he would accept that? They would not have a photographic passport either and they definitely would not have any passports up to date. Will the Acting Leader do that today, as a matter of urgency?