The announcement of an additional £806,000 for transgender services in Northern Ireland has sparked controversy, as the Democratic Unionist Party’s health spokeswoman this week hit out at “transgender experimentation on children”.
The North’s Health Minister Mike Nesbitt of the Ulster Unionist Party last week revealed he was making a fresh investment of over £800,000 in transgender services. The Belfast Newsletter and others report that, in relation to the services, that there is no age limit on who can be accepted.
According to the Belfast Newsletter, both the DUP and the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) have heavily criticised a revelation that “five-year-olds have previously been accepted as transgender patients in Northern Ireland, as well as a current plan to plough more money into trans services by the health minister.”
Information sent to the newspaper by the Belfast Trust in response to a Freedom of Information request shows that “at least three five-year-olds (and possibly as many as 12 – the trust refuses to be definitive) have been registered as patients of its Gender Identity Development Service since 2014.”
“In all, some 438 under-18s have been accepted as patients during that time, between nine and 36 of whom have been aged under 10,” the newspaper reported.
One DUP councillor told Gript that the move was not about care but about ideology, as he called on the National Health Service (NHS), under which care is provided in Northern Ireland, to be “evidence-based.”
“Let’s be clear: at five years old, children should be learning to ride bikes — not being referred to clinics where experimental, potentially catastrophic and irreversible drugs could be on offer,” Cllr Dean A. McCullough said.
“At a time when patients in Northern Ireland are waiting years for life-saving treatment, cancer services are under immense strain, and GPs are overwhelmed — the Health Minister has chosen to allocate £800,000 to a gender identity service with no upper or lower age limit. That is indefensible,” the Belfast councillor added.
“This isn’t about care. It’s about ideology — and the NHS should be focused on evidence-based, urgent frontline needs, not controversial experiments dressed up as compassion.
“The Minister has slipped this announcement out during recess, with no transparency around how the service will operate, who will be eligible, or what principles it will follow. In any other area of healthcare, that lack of detail would be completely unacceptable.
“The Minister must stop. Northern Ireland — and its NHS — deserves better,” he added.
‘SERIOUS SAFEGUARDING CONCERNS’
The party’s health spokeswoman Dianne Dodds MLA said: “When children as young as five are caught up in this, it is not ‘support’. It is ideological experimentation on children by the State.”
“There are serious safeguarding concerns at play here, alongside a growing number of unanswered questions around the proposals announced by Mike Nesbitt last week,” Dodds added.
“When the Assembly returns, the Health Committee must meet with the minister or his offials to establish exactly how this service will operate, what its parameters are, and how vulnerable children will be protected.”
“People right across northern Ireland are rightly worried about what children could be exposed to, and the long-term impact on their wellbeing. This is a safeguarding scandal in the making and it cannot go unchallenged.”
Elsewhere, TUV staffer Samuel Morrison launched a Change.org petition over the funding.
One of the TUV’s MLAs, Timothy Gaston, has written to Mr Nesbitt to voice “deep concern” over the plans to pump more money into trans services, particularly because it “appears to allow for referrals without a lower age limit.”
In a statement provided to the Newsletter, the NI Department of Health said that the service “will provide age appropriate care to adults, children and young people, and their families, who express gender incongruence and who are likely to benefit from clinical support.”
It added: “In some cases, those showing specific gender challenging behaviour will pass in time, but for those with gender dysphoria, it continues through childhood and into adulthood.”
It said that the service would adopt “a holistic, multi-disciplinary integrated approach to assessing and responding to an individual’s needs in view of any co-presentations, and the range of complexities relating to gender identity development.”
“The most appropriate clinical pathway in the best interests of the patient will be determined through an integrated multidisciplinary team approach, fully involving the patient and their family if a child or young person.
“Referrals for the Children & Young People Pathway within this service will be as for all other Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) services and will be age appropriate.
While Unionist parties have been outspoken in their criticisms, in the North,Sinn Féin has said it wants ‘trans protections’ in Northern Ireland’s sex discrimination laws.
In April, Carál Ní Chuilín, MLA for North Belfast for Sinn Féin and a member member of the Stormont committee looking at the future of equality law, called on MLAs to consider inserting ‘trans protections’ into 1970s legislation which protects men and women from discrimination on the basis of sex.
Ní Chuilín urged colleagues to re-examine decades-old laws in light of the UK’s Supreme Court ruling which said that sex in British law is binary and based on biology.
The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) last week declined to clarify if it opposes the UK government’s ban on puberty blockers for children – after it was the only main Stormont party to take part in the Belfast Pride parade last Saturday.
The party’s social media feed showed images of party leader Claire Hanna taking part in Belfast Pride parade, with the SDLP saying it “was proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with our LGBTQIA+ community today, led by Deputy Mayor Paul Doherty and a huge team of reps and activists.”
The nationalist party, along with Sinn Féin, earlier this year, criticised the language of a women’s group for asking for single sex spaces, as reported by the Free Speech Union.
Party members have alleged that there has been a “spike in homophobic hate crime,” with the party also claiming that a recent pride parade was subject to “targeted intimidation.”