Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) has called for improved healthcare for transgender people in Ireland at the 2023 Dublin Pride march.
Members of TCDSU displayed a trans pride flag and banners calling for “Trans Care Now” from the skybridge connecting the main campus to Goldsmith Hall on Westland Row as the Pride march walked by.
The banners also promoted Trans and Intersex Pride Day, taking place on July 8.
Outgoing President Gabi Fullam said TCDSU members thought it was important to promote transgender rights as Ireland remains the worst country in the European Union for trans healthcare.
“Pride is a protest rooted in the fight for trans liberation, and we must continue to honour those roots and fight for the cause that birthed pride,” she said.
“This fight is for justice, healthcare and liberation for all; anything short of that is entirely unacceptable.”
QSoc were recognised participants in the march and told Trinity News the “outpouring of public support for increased access to gender-affirming healthcare in Ireland was deeply heartening”.
“Pride is always a protest first and foremost,” QSoc Auditor Freddie Fallon said. “The organisers recognised that every step of the parade by providing a venue for grassroots activist groups like Trans and Intersex Pride and LGBT+ Traveller and Roma Action Group.
“We hope to see this shift in focus continue as it provides much needed visibility to otherwise underserved and underrepresented groups.”
Fallon noted that this year’s Pride march in Dublin marked 50 years since the formation of the Sexual Liberation Movement, the first official LGBTQ+ group in Ireland.
The movement was formed in College in 1973, with founding members including Senator David Norris, then a lecturer, women’s rights activist Ruth Riddick, and Gay Community News (GCN) founder Edmund Lynch.
2023 also marked 40 years since the first Pride march in Dublin, when people protested the acquittal of five young men who killed Declan Flynn, a 31-year-old gay man, in Fairview, Co Dublin.
It has also been 30 years since homosexuality was decriminalised in Ireland following a challenge against the Irish state brought to the European Court of Human Rights by Senator Norris.
