Irish Senate urged to consider Cass Review findings

An Irish Senator has called for a Seanad debate on the implications of the Cass Review for the welfare of gender-confused children in Ireland.

Independent Senator Sharon Keoghan commended the work of Dr Hilary Cass to the Oireachtas’s upper house and urged the Government to heed its findings.

According to the Health Service Executive (HSE), 233 referrals were made to the Tavistock clinic, Britain’s discredited gender identity service for children in London, by consultants in Ireland between 2012 and 2022.

Sex-swap drugs

The Cass Review concluded that giving trans drugs to children is based on “remarkably weak evidence”, and urged Britain’s NHS to review its use of cross-sex hormones and ensure that gender-confused children receive a holistic assessment of all their needs.

Senator Keoghan hailed the work of Dr Cass as “the most thorough scientific review of the evidence for treatments for gender-questioning and gender-distressed young people ever undertaken”.

She also highlighted the review’s concerns “about the risk of diagnostic overshadowing where there is a single focus on gender and the need for puberty blockers”.

The Senator continued: “This then prevents the other issues affecting the child or young person from being addressed. Puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones should not be routinely prescribed.”

‘Chronic failure’

Criticising HSE plans not to introduce any changes to the model of care in Ireland until 2026, Senator Keoghan retorted: “That is far too late to conduct a review.

“This is fundamentally a question of children’s welfare, and we are witnessing the chronic failure of the State in this regard.

“What will it take for the Government and this country to genuinely look after the welfare of the children of this nation?”

Much to learn

In response, Leader of Seanad Éireann Senator Lisa Chambers admitted: “This is a complex area and I do not pretend to be an expert in it. We are all still learning. However, the protection of children must be paramount.”

She added: “If a body of work has been done over a significant period of time with proper expertise from which we can learn, we should absolutely be learning from it and not repeating the mistakes that have been made elsewhere.

“There are certainly questions to be asked in this State about how we have dealt with those issues to date. I will certainly request a debate on the matter.”

UK restrictions

Earlier this week, the High Court in London has upheld the previous UK Government’s temporary ban on prescribing puberty blockers to gender-confused children in Great Britain.

Activist group TransActual UK, in partnership with the crowdfunding group Good Law Project, failed to overturn the Conservative Government’s emergency legislation, which protects under-18s from obtaining the drugs via private prescriptions from the UK or Europe.

Mrs Justice Lang DBE concluded that Dr Hilary Cass’s findings about the “very substantial risks and very narrow benefits associated with the use of puberty blockers” amounted to “powerful scientific evidence in support of restrictions”.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who has said he will permanently extend the ban after it expires on 3 September, welcomed the court’s decision.