Service must be made available

ALTHOUGH Ireland is one of four countries in the Council of Europe that does not recognise a sex change as legally valid on a person’s birth certificate, it appears the Health Service Executive (HSE) is applying a classic Irish solution to this newly emerging Irish problem.

Since 2000, the HSE paid nearly €70,000 to enable seven people with the condition known as ‘gender identity disorder’ or GID to have sex change operations outside the State.

However, there is mounting evidence to suggest that the number of cases going untreated at home is causing some GID-affected persons to resort to highly dangerous operations performed by back-street practitioners.