A number of groups representing the trans community have expressed concern over news that the National Gender Service (NGS) is to close its waiting list to new patients in March next year.
A coalition of LGBTQ+ organisations described it as "a stark admission of a broken system", leaving over 2,470 people "in a state of agonising limbo".
Yesterday, Prime Time reported that the NGS, which provides healthcare for transgender adults, would be closing waiting lists due to a lack of resources.
A letter sent from the chair of the NGS's Clinical Governance Committee, Brian Cotter to Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill and HSE CEO Bernard Gloster, which was seen by Prime Time, said the decision as "intensely regrettable".
In a statement, Executive Director of TENI Daire Dempsey said the closure represented "a devastating denial" of the basic right of trans people to health and described it as a healthcare failure that should concern every citizen.
The coalition said the National Gender Service is currently seeing people who were referred four and a half years ago. The community estimates someone referred today would have to wait over a decade.
While it welcomed the Department of Health's ongoing work on a new National Clinical Programme for Gender Healthcare, it said the work needed to be prioritised resulting in a service that "is compassionate, timely, and accessible to all who need it".
The group, Mammies for Trans Rights said it had been "inundated" with desperately distressed parents and trans people who had been in contact since the news broke yesterday.
Its co-chair Karen Sugrue said it was time for the Government to take responsibility and deliver timely, reliable, and consistent care for "all of our trans children and loved ones".
The grassroots trans community organisation Transgress said the inability of the NGS to keep up with the waiting list was entirely due to the model of care which it had adopted and "their absolute refusal to modernise the service".
It said the delays were caused by forcing people to undergo unnecessary psychiatric assessments and gatekeeping access to healthcare.
In a statement it said the Government's response to political pressure over trans healthcare had been to repeat over and over that the HSE was working to develop a new model of trans healthcare which Transgress has said should be based on the principle of informed consent.
The group also expressed regret that the RTÉ article that broke the story did not include any input from trans people about the healthcare situation.
