Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

If I may return to that point, I will be brief. I very much support and have always supported the concept that in so far as is practical and possible children should be able to trace their origins. That is a fairly basic principle. We have failed abysmally to address that issue adequately in the area of adoption.

This is because of the constitutional issues and difficulties that arose in marrying the rights of children with the right to privacy of individuals who placed children for adoption at a time when no legislation on origin tracing existed. Donation, whether of sperm or eggs, is a complicated and more difficult issue. There is a diversity of different approaches worldwide. Some states have no particular rules at all. The donor may be anonymous or not anonymous. Some states have a mixture of rules with options for anonymous donation or identified donation. A smaller number of states require that the donor's identity be known.

The difficulty in Ireland is that it is an extremely small country. Our population is entirely different from that, for example, of the neighbouring jurisdiction. I presume that members of the committee have received the letter from the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. I wish to refer to one particular aspect of it. In its letter, the institute references the circumstances and the difficulties with regard to assisted reproduction in Ireland. I do not know if the Minister knows the number of children born through assisted reproduction by donation. If she does, perhaps the committee should be informed of it. We are also entitled to know what consultation the Minister engaged in with fertility clinics and those members of the medical profession who are engaged daily in assisted reproduction medicine in this country. We should not be enacting provisions and saying that we will have a consultative process later. It was my understanding, when the heads of the original Bill were published, that the Department of Health was first going to engage in a consultative process. This is why these particular provisions were not in the original draft Bill. The Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists states in its letter:

It must be realised that virtually no sperm, egg or embryo donation occurs in Ireland at present using sperm or eggs donated in Ireland. It occurs in a handful of cases, usually involving family members or friends. Virtually all sperm donated and used here is imported sperm, mostly from Denmark, and donor eggs used come mostly from the Ukraine. Denmark allows anonymous or non-anonymous [donation] and the Ukraine is all anonymous. The majority of couples having egg donation in fact travel to Spain or the Czech Republic where donation is anonymous. This practice will undoubtedly continue for many years yet and it will take a slow cultural change for the majority of Irish heterosexual couples to move to open donation. Many people in Ireland do not live [it says] in a tolerant or liberal community. Recent appalling coverage in the media confirms this.

I will not comment on the last bit.

I am someone who emotionally believes, as opposed to intellectually believes, that children should be able to trace their origins. However, first, there is no certainty that individuals living in this State, in circumstances in which they have not done so to date, will, in the future, when donation is non-anonymous, provide the necessary donations to facilitate Irish couples in conceiving where there are fertility issues. Second, it is unenforceable legislation in any case. Until there is a united global approach, or at a minimum a united European approach, in this area, those who wish to conceive by anonymous donation will simply get on the plane and they will conceive. Third, even though all of us instinctively feel that children should be able to trace their origins, the truth and the reality is that the children concerned, and it might sound tough to say this, would not be born or exist in many instances without anonymous donation. It is a question of a balanced and rational approach that needs to be applied.

I am aware of what the UN and other organisations have said. However, we now live in a remarkably different world. One reason for recording information about donors or knowing information, for example, about the background of the biological parent or parents of an adopted child was so that its origins could be traced. The Minister referred to the second reason, which is that individuals would have some knowledge of heritable health difficulties they could suffer as a consequence of the genetic makeup of their biological parents.