Gender healthcare service to open new Cork clinic 

Four Cork Oireachtas members have welcomed news that a private gender healthcare service is set to provide a new clinic in Cork from next month.

Gender Plus Hormone Clinic, the medical arm of private Irish gender healthcare provider Gender Plus, has announced that it will start a new clinic in Cork, marking the service’s first expansion in Ireland outside of Dublin.

The Cork clinic will at first run quarterly, headed by service director and nurse consultant Paul Carruthers, and is expected to be operational in September.

The service will serve the trans masculine community, an umbrella term for people who were assigned female at birth but have a gender identity that leans toward the masculine side of the gender spectrum.

Jerry Buttimer, Fine Gael TD for Cork South Central, said he would welcome any positive development in the care of trans people.

“Ministers Jennifer Carroll MacNeill and Mary Butler are delivering on the programme for government commitment to establish a gender healthcare service based on clinical evidence, respect, inclusivity, and compassion,” he said.

'Life-affirming and life-saving healthcare'

Pádraig Rice, Social Democrats TD for Cork South Central, said public access to trans care should be a priority for the Government.

“Ireland currently has the worst transgender healthcare services in all of Europe. Therefore, measures to address that are welcome,” he said. 

“The Government must ensure that there are adequate services and supports via public healthcare for transgender people and their families.”

Similarly, Labour Party senator Laura Harmon called for a greater Government commitment to transgender care.

“We need more healthcare for the trans community across Ireland,” she said. “Ireland is consistently ranked as abysmal for access to healthcare for this community and this can be life-affirming and life-saving healthcare.”

Colm Burke, Fine Gael TD for Cork North Central, said it was important that people seeking specialist transgender care could access them as locally as possible without the stress of unnecessary travel to Dublin.

“This clinic would mean that people from anywhere in Munster will have now options of where they can choose to access care,” he said.

Gender Plus was founded by Dr Aidan Kelly, a clinical psychologist from Drogheda, who began working with the trans community in Ireland in 2016 while based at the Tavistock Gender Identity Clinic in London.

Gender Plus has since become the first Irish-led service supporting trans youth under 18, a group that had previously only been able to access specialist care through London.

The HSE does not formally recognise, accredit, or partner with private gender service providers.

Gender Plus says the medical arm of its service is registered in England with the Care Quality Commission, and its clinicians maintain professional registrations applicable in Ireland and the UK.

Dr Kelly, who sits on the HSE gender programme working group, said the Cork expansion was aimed at addressing a long-standing barrier facing trans people living outside Dublin, who have often had to travel to the capital to access gender-affirming healthcare.

“While our expansion on its own won’t close the access gap that trans people in Ireland face, it’s a genuine step toward care that doesn’t require someone to travel to Dublin just to be seen,” he said.