“UK Supreme Court ruling on biological sex a seismic event that Ireland cannot ignore.” Ken O’Flynn

Independent Ireland Chairman and TD for Cork North-Central Ken O’Flynn has described the UK Supreme Court’s ruling that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the UK’s Equality Act 2010 refer to biological sex, not gender identity or legal sex as defined by a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) as a “victory for common sense, a victory for women everywhere and a victory for self-evident truths that have been ruthlessly smothered by the relentless onslaught of radical gender ideology.”

The landmark decision of the Court followed on from a challenge by For Women Scotland against the Scottish government. The ruling emphasised that biological sex is binary and that while transgender individuals retain protections against discrimination under the “gender reassignment” characteristic, only biologically born women are entitled to protection under the sex-based rights category.

In Ireland the Equal Status Acts’ use of “gender” (rather than “sex”) is in alignment with the Gender Recognition Act of 2015 which states that transgender individuals are protected based on their self-declared gender. However, the UK ruling has led to a chorus of calls from Irish women’s groups calling for legal challenges to clarify whether “gender” can include biological sex in certain contexts, such as single-sex spaces:

“Ireland, through the enforcement of the Gender Recognition Act 2015 (GRA) has been trapped in a downward spiral of fantasy, appeasement of radical gender ideologues and a state-backed erosion of biological reality that has hit women and girls the hardest.”

Cllr Linda de Courcy, who has consistently raised concerns about gender ideology and the encroachment on women’s spaces also welcomed the decision stating: 

"I was delighted to see the ruling of the UK Supreme Court returning truth and common sense to our nearest neighbours on Tuesday. The judges unanimously ruled that the term woman means a “biological woman” and sex means “biological sex”.

"It is shocking that in the 21st century we have to have a court overrule a government to pull them back to the most basic of truths, there are two sexes, male and female and two genders, male and female."

"Trans ideology is inherently damaging to women and girls, depriving us of our right to single sex, safe spaces and the ability to compete fairly in sports. Unfortunately, the 2015 Gender Recognition Act is still in force in the 26 counties, this means we have biological men in women’s prisons and teenage boys playing in girls sports"

O'Flynn Raises GRA Concern;

TD O'Flynn Continued
“In fact, the GRA is a clear example of what legislative violence to the understanding of what constitutes a woman looks like, and it has to repealed if we want to our laws to reflect reality.”

“I would go further and say that the GRA in its current format actively facilitates the increased likelihood of physical and psychological violence against women because of the manner in which our prisons, our women’s refuges and singles sex spaces are violated by having to accommodate themselves to the wishes of those who self-ID as women, even though they remain fully biologically male.”

“Ireland must return to those core biological and legal realities that were accepted by the majority until the revolution in gender theory swept through our political institutions with the blessing of catastrophically well-meaning but dangerously deluded politicians who uncritically accepted NGO talking points while ignoring or being indifferent to the implications of the 2015 Gender Recognition Act for biological women and girls.”

“There is nothing progressive about pretending that men can be women. There is nothing progressive about sacrificing women’s rights on the altar of political expediency. And there is certainly nothing progressive in continuing to enforce a legislative regime that compels people to accommodate a private individual understanding of gender against a backdrop of cultural intimidation where people cannot state an obvious truth-men are not women and they never can be irrespective of what a piece of paper says to the contrary.”

“The UK Supreme Court ruling should give courage to all of us to defend biological truths. The time for cowardice or reticence is over.”