Multiple five-year-old children accepted as patients to Belfast Trust's transgender service
Children as young as five have been accepted as patients of Northern Ireland's specialist transgender health service, the News Letter can reveal.
The news comes after it was revealed last week that health minister Mike Nesbitt has committed extra funding for trans patients.
The figures were obtained via a Freedom of Information request to the Belfast health trust, which runs the Province’s trans services.
It sent the News Letter a breakdown of the under-18s who were accepted as patients at its Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) since 2014.
This shows that the peak year for under-18 patients being accepted onto the service was 2015, when 68 were accepted.
It has since steadily declined each year. The figure for 2024, the most recent full calendar year, was 22.
The total number of under-18s accepted by the service from 2014 to 2024 was 438.
In terms of the youngest patients' age, somewhere between three and 12 five-years-olds have been accepted onto the service from 2014 to June 2025 (the trust refuses to divulge exact figures on patient confidentiality grounds).
In all, from 2014 to June 2025 the number of children beneath the age of 10 who have been accepted onto the service is somewhere between nine and 36.
The trust also broke down its patient numbers by male and female – but the results are impossible to make sense of, because it is not clear if they refer to patients' self-declared gender identity or their actual biological sex.
In a move announced not by the Department of Health but by trans lobby group The Rainbow Project, it emerged earlier this month that fresh investment was being made in trans services.
When prompted for details, the department issued a statement from health minister Mike Nesbitt which said: "I am committed to improving wider gender identity service provision for children, young people and adults in Northern Ireland.
"Since 2019, my officials have worked closely and collaboratively with the Belfast HSC Trust, the Gender Identity Review Group, and Gender Identity Liaison Group to develop a business case for the expansion of the Gender Identity Lifespan service."
Though the statement spoke of an "expansion", suggesting an existing service of that name is already running, Googling "Gender Identity Lifespan" and "Northern Ireland" brings up no information.
Mr Nesbitt continued: "This will increase capacity within the service to allow the trust to address waiting times and ensure that patients receive the appropriate care they need in a timely way.
"The funding investment will also provide much-needed additional medical and nursing resources into the service.
"Referrals can be made by GPs or via the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) team pathway for children regardless of trust of origin.
"Each of the trust CAMHS teams provide ongoing support to their patients during their journey.
"£806k funding will be allocated to Belfast trust in the coming weeks."
In addition to revealing under-18 patient numbers, the Belfast trust has also indicated to the News Letter that it has given triptorelin to children as a puberty blocker.
The same drug has been used to suppress the urges of sex offenders - a practice sometimes referred to as "chemical castration".
However, it refused to provide the full list of puberty blocking-drugs which it has used, stating that it would take too long to compile.
The prescription of puberty blockers has now been phased out across the UK, amid concerns about their long-term health effects and children's ability to consent to them.