Why do we need a Gender Recognition act in Ireland?
-14 October 2010

Talk to be given in DCU by transgendered woman, Louise Hannon:
Date: Tuesday 19 October
Time: 4-5pm Venue: Room C166, Henry Grattan Building, DCU

The seminar is open to the public. Louise will address the following issues:

• 1/ The legal situation with regard to transgender in Europe and the European Commission on Human Rights
• 2/ What up to this point in time has been done to allow for transgendered people to adopt their true gender,
  3/ The problems associated with transgender
• 4/ What differences a Gender Recognition Act will make and what pitfalls we need to look out for in drafting the new Act,
• 5/ Why adopting the UK act in total is not a suitable solution in an Irish context.

BACKGROUND:
Louise Hannon lives and works as a transgendered woman strongly supporting the need for a strong human rights infrastructure in Ireland. She has had a varied business life. She has worked in the insurance industry, and managed various sales teams for some of the biggest insurance companies in the world. She moved to Dublin ten years ago and realised that there was very little web support for Irish people who were gender questioning, so she set up a web group which has now 3500 members, (not all in Ireland ) for transgendered people, their families, partners and friends. She soon realised that a web presence while good was not enough and began organising social events for transgendered people in Dublin. At the same time she became more interested in direct activism and she joined the Dublin Pride organisation where she has been a board director for three years. She became a committee member of Transgender Equality Network Ireland.

She is a member the Labour Party and is now part of the Labour Party National Equality Co-ordinating Council, and the National Executive of Labour LGBT. Through these two bodies she has been behind the drive for the Labour Party to adopt a policy on a Gender Recognition Act, which they did recently at conference. She wrote an analysis of the UK GRA for the party recently. Louise Hannon is also a steering group member of the Equality and Rights Alliance, set up to counter the 43 % budget cut in the Equality Authority and the Irish Human Rights Commission. She is a Member of Amnesty International Ireland working group on inclusion and diversity.