The Irish Times - Monday, February 20, 2012
Courage of plaintiff a source of inspiration
My favourite case: BILL SHIPSEY SC
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2012/0220/1224312049586.htmlWhat is your favourite case?
The case of Dr Lydia Foy, the transgender person who was born male and sought to have her birth certificate rectified to reflect her new gender. The Free Legal Advice Centres represented Dr Foy and I was brought in to work on the case.
[...]
Because it was one of the most interesting. Here you had an individual from a small minority who was seeking to assert an important constitutional right to privacy, but in order to asset her privacy right, she had to go very public in a way that took a huge toll on her life.
She was subject to ridicule, cat-calls, heckling. It brought out some of the worst in Ireland as well as some of the best. Here was a courageous woman saying: "In my soul I am a woman, but because of an accident of birth I am regarded as a man, and that is something deeply offensive to who I am, to my gender identity."
The State had already given her a passport and driving licence to reflect her new gender, but her birth certificate, the most fundamental of identity documents, still said she was a male.
