When you give blood the first time a nurse sits you down and goes through the screening questionnaire with you. They did, however, question us extensively on our sexual history. We weren't sure if it was okay to give blood, having consumed so much alcohol the night before, but no one at the donation centre mentioned this. My friend Una and I had booked our spot a few months previously, as part of the "Now we're 18, let's do stuff we could not do before" phase we were going through at the time. I first gave blood in 2011, the evening after my Leaving Cert results came out. With luck the Irish Blood Transfusion Service will move more quickly now and remove the discriminatory 12-month deferral period, as HIV Ireland and other groups have repeatedly called on them to do. Ireland appears to be following in the UK's footsteps very slowly in this regard, having switched from a lifetime ban to a 12-month deferral period in 2017. In Ireland, the blood donation system is still discriminatory. As long as you have not had anal sex with a new partner (regardless of your or your partner’s gender) in the past three months, then you’re good to go. This was changed to a 12-month deferral period in 2011, and to a three-month deferral period in 2017.įinally, this summer, after years of campaigning from gay-rights organisations, discrimination based on sexual orientation has been removed from the British rulesįinally, this summer, after years of campaigning from gay-rights organisations, discrimination based on sexual orientation has been removed from the rules. From the 1980s to 2011, if you were a man who had ever had sex with another man, you were banned for life from donating blood. The new rules in the UK mean that, for the first time in decades, gay and bisexual men are able to donate blood on the same terms as everyone else. I assured them it was no problem: I didn’t mind waiting, and I had heard all about the change of rules that had necessitated the updated forms. The nurses kept apologising to me for the wait – "It's our first morning with these new forms, you see." The function room was filled with medical equipment, plastic reclining chairs and NHS staff rushing about. One Monday morning in June I was waiting to donate blood in a fancy hotel in Canary Wharf, in central London.