Legal gender recognition by self-declaration
A 22-year struggle ends: Ireland allows trans people to change their legal gender without a medical report.
On 15 July 2015, the Irish parliament, the Oireachtas, passed the Gender Recognition Act. This made Ireland one of the first countries in the world to allow trans people to have their gender legally recognised by self-declaration alone, without a medical report, without a psychiatric diagnosis and without proof of surgery.
Since then, anyone who is of age and resident in Ireland can have their gender changed on their birth certificate, passport and driving licence by means of a formal declaration. The government had originally planned to require certificates from endocrinologists and psychiatrists. After fierce opposition from activists, this hurdle was dropped.
Behind the law lay a 22-year struggle. In 1993 the trans woman and dentist Lydia Foy first applied for a new birth certificate and was turned down. She went to court, first in 1997 and then again. In 2007 the High Court found that Ireland was in breach of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights because it offered trans people no route to recognition. It was the first such declaration of incompatibility under Ireland's ECHR Act. Only after further lawsuits and growing pressure from the Council of Europe did the government bring forward the law.
The timing was no coincidence. Just a few weeks earlier, in May 2015, Ireland had become the first country in the world to introduce same-sex marriage by popular vote. Because marriage was now open to all, married trans people no longer had to divorce in order to be recognised.
Criticism remained: the law excluded non-binary people, and young people aged 16 to 18 still needed a court order. Lydia Foy finally received her new birth certificate in September 2015, more than two decades after her first application.