If you were looking, yesterday, for extensive Irish media coverage of the United Kingdom’s Cass Review into the treatment of children and young adults with gender dysphoria, then for most of the day you will not have found it. The Irish Times, which fancies itself this country’s newspaper of record, carried an un-bylined article borrowed from the UK’s guardian newspaper, and diligently buried it in a corner of its website that only somebody actively seeking the story would have uncovered. Nor, unsurprisingly, by 2pm had RTE, the national taxpayer funded broadcaster, covered the story, though they later did a segment on Drivetime and a short piece on the Six One news. The Journal, which is also taxpayer funded courtesy of various European Union grants, was similarly silent by early afternoon. As was, to nobody’s shock, the relentlessly left wing Irish Examiner.
This absence of coverage, a cynic might suggest, could be explained by the fact that the report issued a series of largely devastating conclusions about the impact of “gender affirming care”, as the process of medically changing a child’s hormones to make them male or female is euphemistically called, on those subjected to it. That this is the very model of care for gender-questioning children largely favoured in Ireland – indeed an unknown number of Irish children were sent to the UK to receive this treatment – and advanced in the pages of many of these same newspapers over the years might well make the findings of the report difficult for some newsdesks and editorial offices to stomach.
But nor is it only the Irish media that has questions to answer: Consider this video, published by the largest union for primary schoolchildren in Ireland, the INTO, just four years ago. It purports to advise a teacher on how to deal with a primary school child who is unsure about their gender. The video appears to have been subsequently removed, but this does not detract from the fact that the INTO published it, and presumably commissioned it in the first place:
@INTOnews had a video on their website entitled 'Facilitating a social transition', since removed. It is a cartoon of a teacher and children in a classroom, in it children ask; "So boys can change into girls? and girls can change into boys?" The teacher says; "Yes!" https://t.co/ZXmklyRiIY pic.twitter.com/ywBI0sv3wb
— The Countess (@TheCountessIE) August 31, 2022
There are many things to be said about that video: We’ll start with the obvious point that it encourages teachers to teach their entire class of presumably impressionable children that transgender theory is fact, rather than simply a highly disputed, if not outright extremist, theory of how gender and sex interact. Then there’s the fact that there is no mention in the video at all of any role for the teacher in advising the parents or the child to see a specialist clinician before undertaking a “social transition” – something that the Cass Review says is vital. Then there’s the business about teaching children about “nonbinary” identity, in primary school, which does not appear on any curriculum.
I asked the INTO, in the aftermath of the Cass Review, if they had anything to say about the appropriateness or otherwise of that video, why it was published, and if it has been removed. I received a curt email in response telling me that the organisation was “not in a position to comment” on its own video.
Surprising, but hardly shocking.
The INTO’s video is relevant as a demonstration of just how deeply and quickly a particular ideology about transgenderism seeped from the fringes of academia into, potentially, every primary school in the land. This happened without any real political debate and with, as many reporters such as Eilis O’Hanlon have noted, the substantial involvement of government funded lobby groups such as the Transgender Equality Network of Ireland. We’ve also had whistleblowers like Dr. Donal O’Shea come forward to warn that in many such cases, “ideology” was directing the trends in clinical care. It’s worth quoting Dr. O’Shea, in fact:
“If you just say ‘Yes’ to everyone who wants to go on hormones… without looking in some detail at the other health-related issues that are going on, then you will end up with the disasters that we saw in Tavistock.
“We said, ‘Stop the Tavistock link’, the HSE persisted with it until Tavistock closed… and then a couple of weeks ago we find out that they’ve established the same kind of links with a clinic in Antwerp that is at least as bad as Tavistock – most likely worse.”
This report, in other words, is highly relevant to Ireland: Irish children were sent by the Irish Government, to the UK to receive the kinds of treatment that have been scathingly dismantled and discredited in the Cass Review. Yet, apparently, the review is barely worth a mention in the Irish media, and certainly not worthy of comment, it seems, from those who rule us.
Normally, at this point in an article I would offer speculation and explanation for why this might be the case, but in this case no speculation suffices: The blackout on this report and its significance in Ireland is little short of a disgrace, and there is very little that can be said in mitigation for those in the Irish media apparently determined to attempt to cover it up.
We will leave the last word to Senator Michael McDowell:
“I am today calling on the Minister for Health and the HSE to immediately discontinue in the public health service the prescription of puberty blockers. I also call on the Irish Medical Council to issue a statement that pending the conduct of a review which needs to commence immediately that medical practitioners, including clinical psychiatrists in public and private practice, are to discontinue their use until further notice.”
Don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen, is my advice.