Dr. Thomas Finegan:

This is almost an omnibus Bill in that it draws a variety of issues together. It is difficult to make one statement that would cover everything in the general scheme of the Bill. Heads 7, 10 and 11 are generally considered as priorities. My comments on the rights of the child being ignored were made in the context of heads 3 and 5, which make a strong presumption that the right of an adult to reproductive autonomy and to have a child by commercial or artificial means should be paramount. This right is not balanced, either in the text or the accompanying notes, by the best interest of the child. The child's best interests only kick in after he or she has been brought into the world and issues such as guardianship, access and custody arise. Children are deliberately deprived of both parents, their genetic identity and access to and support of their natural parents. They are deprived of a mother and father.

Other speakers raised the possibility that a child's right to identity might be downgraded. That is a constitutional right which can be drawn from a Supreme Court case in 1998 but it is merely a function of the fact that adult reproductive autonomy is privileged over and above everything else. That is to be expected when one makes the decision that there is such a thing. It is a novel right to have a child. This is where I see that children, and their origin and upbringing, are being commodified. It is not a surprise that much of sections 3 and 5 deal with commercial arrangements of industry and transactions between supply and demand. That is to be expected because we are creating a right to have a child, which has not existed in the Constitution or elsewhere in Irish law, European conventions or international human rights law. This is a novel and radical prescription.