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Transgender Woman Enters Civil Partnership
A transgender woman has officially entered a Civil Partnership with her female partner in Ireland.
The registration ceremony, which took place some time ago, amounts to legal recognition of the woman's acquired gender because the Civil Partnership Act requires that civil partners must be legally of the same sex.
The Civil Registration Service officially recognised the woman, named Maria, as female even though the Government has not yet introduced legislation to legally recognise transgender persons. Maria was assisted by FLAC, the Free Legal Advice Centres, in her correspondence with the registration authorities, which resulted in her being allowed to register her civil partnership.
Maria is a citizen of another EU state living and working in Ireland. She is fully recognised as a female in her own country and has a birth certificate and identity documents, all showing her gender as female.
Under the EU law on free movement for workers, the Irish authorities must accept her in the gender recognised by her home country. So when she met and formed a relationship with her female partner, the Civil Registration Service had to accept that they were of the same gender and could enter into a civil partnership.
An Irish citizen in Maria's position cannot enter into a civil partnership because Irish law still does not provide for recognition of transgender persons. Nearly five years after the High Court decided in the Lydia Foy case in 2007 that Irish law was in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights over its attitude to transgender persons, the law has still not been changed.
For more information on FLAC and their work see http://www.flac.ie/