This article implies that the Irish government didn't have a clue what they were doing when they passed the GRA.
https://www.lawsociety.ie/gazette/top-stories/2019/10-october/male-bodied-transgender-inmate-housed-with-women-prisoners
Criminal defence lawyer Robert Purcell says that the Gender Recognition Act 2015 has placed the State in an impossible position with regard to transgender prisoners.
Currently, a pre-operative, pre-hormone therapy, male-to-female transgender prisoner is being held in Limerick women’s prison.
Robert Purcell is chair of the Law Society Criminal Law Committee: “The law that was enacted in 2015 did not envisage this situation, and it puts the Prison Service and the courts in a difficult position because, obviously, if somebody is self-declaring that they have to be recognised, then they have to be dealt with on that basis, even though physically, they have not have made the [physical] transformation.
“I don’t think the legislation envisaged the ability of transgender people to be able to self-declare; and it didn’t foresee the problems it would cause if a transgender, self-declared person was held in a mixed prison,” he said.
If this is an accurate quote, this seems quite astonishing. The Irish government passed a law which said that anyone could change their legally recognised sex, on demand, with no gatekeeping, i.e. self declare their sex, yet they didn't envisage "the ability of transgender people to be able to self-declare". What on earth did they think the legislation was designed to do?
What sort of government passes a self-declaration law but doesn't understand that this means that they have passed a self-declaration law?