If Leo Varadkar is serious about tackling the issue of biological males in women’s prisons, let’s see him prove it

While there were a number of issues lurking in the murky loch of Scottish politics that conspired to bring her down, Sturgeon’s stubborn refusal to understand voters’ unhappiness with her support for the housing of biological males in women’s prisons was certainly chief among them.

Yet Irish politicians remain oblivious to the danger the same issue may pose to them.

When asked at a press conference about the case of Barbie Kardashian — a 21-year-old biologically male but legally recognised female who was jailed last week for four-and-a-half years for threatening to rape, torture and murder their mother — the Taoiseach said: “I actually don’t know anything about the case yet, I first saw it reported at the weekend.”

There are only two possibilities. The first is that Leo was being ‘economical with the actualité’. The second is that he was telling the truth.

Leo’s difficulty is that neither option paints him in a particularly flattering light, considering how serious this issue is for some of the most vulnerable women in society.

Ignorance is no defence. I personally know scores of people who have contacted ministers’ offices on this issue, from the Taoiseach down.

Why are these messages being ignored? Are they not getting through to the right desks? If not, why not?

Pleading blissful ignorance is even less defensible considering Varadkar admitted in the same press conference last week to knowing just how politically toxic the issue had been allowed to become in Scotland.

It’s astonishing that the Taoiseach should feel no loss of face over being better informed about the situation regarding transgender prisoners in women’s prisons in a neighbouring country than he is about his own.​

To his credit, when asked directly whether he thought “violent biological males should be put into women’s prisons”, Leo couldn’t have been clearer: “No, I don’t, quite frankly.”

He further said “we may have to consider changing the law” to “make sure women are protected”.

That answer puts him smack bang in the centre ground of opinion on this matter, which, spanning all party loyalties and none, regards the housing of violent offenders with penises alongside at-risk women as abhorrent.

The problem is that the Government cannot possibly follow through on this common-sense policy without coming into conflict with its own position on gender self-ID.

Since the Gender Recognition Act was passed in 2015, a man who says he is a woman is regarded in law as being one in every meaningful sense.

To say otherwise may soon even become a punishable hate crime.

As such, Barbie Kardashian has the right to be housed in a women’s prison, and it’s sidestepping the issue to state, as many supporters of gender self-ID do, that this is not a problem because the prisoner in question is currently being held in strict solitary confinement separate from female inmates in Limerick Prison anyway.

That was the approach taken by Justice Minister Simon Harris when asked about Leo’s comments.

“I think the point the Taoiseach was making,” he said, dodging the question, “and certainly what I took from the Taoiseach’s comment, was that there is no circumstance, regardless of gender, where anybody should be at risk of violence in a prison.”

To paraphrase the famous film quote from the Marx Brothers: “Who are you going to believe — me, or the evidence of your own eyes?”

Millions have now watched the Taoiseach answer the question of whether “violent biological males” should be in a women’s prison with a firm: “No.”

There were no qualifications. No get-out clauses. No meant no.​

Simon Harris’s Jesuitical evasion is what tarnishes political discourse. People want straight answers to these questions, not diplomatic obfuscation.

The Taoiseach gave them a straight answer, and then the official rowing back began almost immediately.

The mystery is whose interests they’re actually serving by doing this.

Why would any government in its right mind chose to pick a fight with the voters rather than ideologically captured agencies whose very existence is reliant on public money?

It can only be because ministers don’t think women’s repeatedly expressed concerns on this matter are important enough to merit making a stand, having calculated that people uneasy about the direction of government policy have nowhere else to go at the ballot box because the opposition are even more gung-ho about it.

That complacency could quickly come back to bite them.

To put it bluntly: This gender ID stuff has no popular support, either here in Ireland or elsewhere.

Only last week, the World Athletics Council announced anyone who transitioned after going through normal male puberty would no longer be eligible to compete in women’s events.

Under Irish law as it stands, Barbie Kardashian has the right to be housed in a women’s prison

The ban comes into effect next week — a stunning victory for campaigners who for years have been crying aloud in the wilderness as they tried to warn about the threat to women’s sports.

In Britain, Labour leader Keir Starmer likewise gave hints that he may dilute his party’s support for radical Scottish-style gender self-ID.

Clearly he is not prepared to sacrifice his chances of winning the next election by setting himself against the sensible middle ground of opinion.

One single transgender prisoner was the final straw that effectively broke the back of the Scottish first minister. It’s not inconceivable that it could happen again, and elsewhere.

As Starmer said last week: “You have to carry the public with you.”

Losing the room rarely ends well, as French president Emmanuel Macron is discovering to his cost right now.

The Taoiseach surely understands this, even if Simon Harris doesn’t.

But carrying the day will mean taking on those in his own party, as well as in Fianna Fáil and the Greens, who show all the appearance of having contempt for the majority of voters who are not on board with the appalling crimes of biological males being added to the female side of the balance sheet.

When Varadkar says he’s “going to have to look into it”, and change the law if needs be, he had better mean it.

This problem is not going away.