TENI, the Transgender Equality Network of Ireland, has produced a Sports National Governing Body Policy Tracker at https://teni.ie/resources/sports/. Presumably the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth is happy to have its name prominently emblazoned on its policy, as seen above.
But how does lobbying for men and boys to participate and compete in women's and girls sport meet the Department's remit to ensure equality for women and girls and in their own sports?
TENI's tracker lists various sports bodies and what their policies are regarding the demand of those who pretend to be the opposite sex in order to participate and compete in what is not their correct sex category.
Bodies play sports, not "identities". So where a sports body says that "transmen" can compete there may be no problem with that, since "transmen" are women: unless of course such women are e.g. taking testosterone which might impact their ability in sport, in which case it may well be both unfair and unsafe for other women in that sport.
A glance at some of the policies by national sports bodies indicates the level of ideological capture which has taken place. The Ladies Gaelic Football Association (LGFA) says that
Basketball Ireland says in its Transgender Inclusion Plan 2020 that
Who approved such an idea - that a boy might have had "sex reassignment surgery before puberty" and why include this?
The Irish Judo Association says
The link provided by TENI for Taekwondo Ireland is to the Eligibility Regulations for Transgender Athletes policy in World Taekwondo. The Irish Taekwon-Do Association (ITA) says that "...Taekwon-Do is famous for its spectacular range of kicks and punches."
For men claiming to be women ("Transgender female") the Eligibility Regulations say:
The Irish Rugby Football Union by contrast makes it clear that when it comes to participation and competition only "trans men" can play (in women's rugby), since of course they are women.
TENI is just one of a plethora of nominally "non-governmental" organisations (NGOs) provided with generous funding yearly to promote their own agendas which the public have had no say in.
In the latest annual report for the year ended December 2023 TENI was given €251,516 between the HSE, the National Office of Suicide Prevention (NOSP) and the Department of of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY). This was an increase from €209,646 in 2022.
Several activist groups such as TENI are not only funded by the State but by other funders both inside and outside the country e.g. the US Tides Foundation and the UK's Sigrid Rausing Trust. It's not clear where the money disbursed by the Rowan Trust originates and its website has expired. The Executive Director of the trust is Michael Barron, a co-founder of Belong To, another lobby group which is also well funded by several Government departments and agencies. (He explained to Gay Community News in 2022
"I began going to the States to attract international funders to Ireland, and that worked to some degree, but then we also tried to set up an LGBTQ+ fund with individual owners. that became the Equality Fund in 2018, and out of that we created the Rowan Trust.")
Outhouse, another NGO funded by the State to the tune of €438,705 in 2023 in "grants from Government and other co-funders" out of a total income for the year of €730,788 made a submission to the public consultation on the next National Strategy for Women and Girls last October:
"Transwomen" are men
No one can change sex, not even with hormones and/or surgery. Our sex is revealed in every cell of the body. Men and boys are free to participate and compete in their own sex category.
The drafters of the Gender Recognition Bill knew that the inclusion of men in women's sport would infringe on fairness and safety for women. Head 26 in the General Scheme of the Bill in 2013 provided that participants could be excluded in the interests of fair competition and the safety of competitors:
But this was opposed by various groups from the gender identity lobby such as TENI, TransparenCI, LGBT Noise and the then Equality Authority. It was also opposed by the Irish Human Rights Commission, IHRC, which later merged with the former Equality Authority to become IHREC, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission:
Last year TENI and other lobbyists wrote an open letter to the chief executive Dr Una May of Sport Ireland complaining that
"Here in Ireland, we have already seen a number of sporting bodies begin to develop policies which have effectively completely excluded trans women and girls from participating at all levels of competition within women’s sport, such as in Basketball and Swimming".
Pretending men are any sort of women conflicts with biological reality, undermines the integrity of sex-based protections and adversely impacts women and girls in areas such as safety, privacy and fairness in sports.
As a letter writer to the Irish Independent pointed out last December:
"If our new taoiseach hopes to govern unfettered by entrenched and unaccountable interests, the first order of business must be a public audit of NGO funding.
These organisations cost the State about €6bn a year, yet they have no defined role in the Constitution that they lobby ceaselessly to change."
For the State to financially support nominally "non-Governmental" organisations which lobby to undermine the rights and safety of women is to effectively discriminate against women.
Why should the taxpayer be made to fund organisations which lobby to have men and boys participate and compete in the sports category of women and girls?
