A dentist who was registered at birth as male and who later underwent a sex change operation has told the High Court it is very important to her sense of dignity that the gender entry on her birth certificate records her as female.
Lydia Foy (59), of Athy, Co Kildare, told Mr Justice Liam McKechnie yesterday that the trauma and stress of the condition from which she suffers, Gender Identity Disorder, is "bad enough" without having to address "all the legal penalties" resulting from it.
Mary O'Toole SC, for Dr Foy's wife and daughters, put to Dr Foy that, when she filled in a form in 2005 for a Gender Recognition Certificate in the UK, she had failed to clarify that she remained legally married in Ireland and was not divorced.
Dr Foy said she was not dishonest in filling out that form. Her marriage was over, she could not be married to a woman since she underwent irreversible surgery in the early 1990s and she was judicially separated, she said.
Dr Foy agreed with Ms O'Toole that she had applied in 2006 for a divorce from Anne Foy, whom she married in 1977, and that she is the biological parent of two daughters from that marriage. Ms O'Toole said Dr Foy's application for divorce involved a recognition that she was male at one point and had married.
Dr Foy said it was "not as simple as that". She said the description of her as male on her birth certificate did not acknowledge her situation.