Dearbhail McDondald: Reluctant U-turn brings state into line with Europe
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High Court Judge Liam McKechnie had implored the Government to "urgently review" the rights of transgendered people.
That was eight years ago when he rejected Dr Lydia Foy's legal claim to compel the Registrar General's office to issue her with a new birth certificate.
Born a man, Lydia Foy, a dentist who was diagnosed with gender identity disorder in 1990, had gender reassignment surgery in the UK in 1992.
A year later she applied in Ireland to have a new birth certificate issued classifying her as a female and granting official recognition of her as a woman.
When the Registrar General's Office refused, the former married dad of two began a tortured 13-year legal campaign in 1997 to change the law to allow transgendered people to legally change their gender and obtain new birth certificates and other official documents in their new gender.
The lengthy legal battle ended when the Government, which had been found in October 2007 by Judge McKechnie in a new, consolidated set of legal proceedings to be in breach of the European Convention of Human Rights, abandoned its Supreme Court appeal.
That decision means that the Government must now introduce new laws to afford legal recognition to the acquired gender of transsexuals.
The Foy case is groundbreaking not just because it will result in legal recognition for transgendered people, but also because it is the first time that a citizen has forced the Government to recognise a right that they were denied under the Irish Constitution.
The Government knew in 2002 that the law would ultimately have to be changed following a similar case which had been successfully taken against the UK at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
A year later the Irish Government incorporated the European Convention of Human Rights into Irish law, albeit at a sub-constitutional level -- which means that wherever there is a conflict between the Constitution and the convention, the Constitution must prevail.
After the 2004 British case countries throughout Europe changed their laws on transgendered people as a failure to do so would result in a breach of the European convention, but instead of bringing Irish law into line with other member states, Ireland remained out on a limb.
Despite the fact that it knew its laws were in breach of the European convention, the Irish Government persisted in its opposition, resulting in our laws being declared incompatible with the convention three years ago.
A year later the United Nations Human Rights Committee and the Irish Human Rights Committee urged the State to allow transgender people to be issued with birth certificates.
The State, on abandoning its appeal, has finally capitulated.
The real test now lies in whether it will move swiftly to introduce new laws to uphold the rights of transgendered people.
- Dearbhail McDondald
Irish Independent
