At Trans Healthcare Action, we advocate for an Ireland where all people have autonomy over their own bodies, lives, and futures. As a collection of grassroots volunteers, our work always centres the best interests of the trans community. With this in mind, on September 2nd we resigned from our role on the National Clinical Programme for Gender Healthcare (NCPGH)’s Working Group.

We recognise that our involvement granted us a unique opportunity to advocate for our community. However, we do not feel that the development of the model has followed its stated values of experience and clinical evidence, respect, inclusiveness or compassion. We cannot continue to support a project that is incompatible with our values, our vision, and our principles.

We are grateful to the HSE for offering this opportunity to us. While this project has not worked out, we remain open to co-operation on future initiatives which would allow us to meaningfully collaborate on improvements to Ireland's gender-affirming healthcare provision.

We will continue to advocate for an informed consent model of gender-affirming healthcare that values the bodily autonomy, lived experiences, and real concerns of trans and gender-diverse people. Trans people should be able to access care locally, in primary care settings, from clinicians who respect and support us to make our own decisions.

We hope that the community at large understands our decision, and will continue to support us. Together, we can build a liberated healthcare system – one that truly acts in our best interests.