Not everyone in the Irish parliament has gone ompletely mad! 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 deeply discredited gender identity service for children in London, by consultants in Ireland between 2012 and 2022.
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.”
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?”