Northern Ireland’s health minister has allocated more than £800,000 (about $1 million) for gender-affirming care. Mike Nesbitt, who is also the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, said adult and youth services at Belfast’s Brackenburn Clinic were being combined to prevent a “waiting-list cliff edge” for young people once they turn 18. The Belfast Health Trust, which runs the clinic, told the BBC there were 1,163 adults and 45 children and young people on the waiting list. The longest wait for an adult to be seen was more than seven years, compared with a target time of 13 weeks, Vice reported. A spokesperson for The Rainbow Project, an LGBTQ+ charity in Northern Ireland, said that the clinic had been operating “in an extremely limited capacity” for the past seven years because of staffing and funding shortfalls. Nesbitt’s decision to allocate extra money has come in for criticism from Democratic Unionist Party and Traditional Unionist Voice politicians, as well as from some of ...