A participant at Dublin's main Pride parade in 2019 waves a trans flag. (Szymon Barylski/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Hundreds of people took to the streets on Saturday (July 6) for the second Trans Pride march through the Irish capital, Dublin.

People gathered at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin and marched to Merrion Square to protest for the rights and needs of the transgender community.

Trans Pride Dublin took place on the 27th anniversary of the death of Marsha P. Johnson.

Johnson, who was a black trans woman and sex worker famous for being heavily involved in the Stonewall uprising of 1969 and for starting the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), was found dead in the Hudson river on 6 July 1992.

People who gathered in Dublin on Saturday were asked to remember her as the fight for trans rights continues.

Trade union representatives and members of political parties joined the protest, which included speeches from members of Unite and the Sex Workers Alliance Ireland.

Thomas White, one of the organisers of the march, said, “It is time for the Government to act and stop talking about equality and just paying lip service.”

“Ireland has one of the highest levels of transphobic hate crimes in Europe and it needs to be tackled,” White added.

Dublin Trans Pride theme was ‘Break the binary’

Noah Halpin, from the trans healthcare campaign group This Is Me, said, “I’m cautiously optimistic, there’s little bits of change happening, but it’s very slow, which is why days like today are so important.

“This year we met Simon Harris [the Irish Health Minister] and told him that it wasn’t good enough that it was a three-year-long waiting list for hormone replacement therapy, that we have no surgery options in Ireland, and that mental health services for trans people are completely inadequate.

“This needs to change immediately, not in two years, right now.

“The Gender Recognition Act is still being held up, there are non-binary people not legally recognised by the state, there are young trans people who cannot self-determine their gender identity.

“Healthcare is still inadequate, it’s being gate-kept, we need to stand up and say that needs to change right now.”

The theme of this year’s parade was “Break the Binary,” with organisers saying they chose it to highlight their “opposition to oppressive and rigid gender norms in our society.”

According to the Irish Times, up to 1,000 people attended this year’s Trans Pride Dublin, double the number who attended the inaugural year.