Dr. Mary Wingfield:

The commission met for three years and cost a great deal of money. It produced an excellent report but it was then left on the shelf. That is a total waste of taxpayers' money and all our time. This matter needs to be carefully debated. On the other hand, those of us working in the field believe that Parts 2 and 3 of the Children and Family Relationships Act 2015 were rushed through because of the same sex referendum. There was a need to clarify legislation for that and they were rushed through. We certainly believe that the aspects concerning donor conception were not debated sufficiently. We would like there to be a debate, but it cannot continue forever.

The Taoiseach and the Minister for Health have also committed to introducing public funding for in vitro fertilisation, IVF, treatment. We desperately need that, but they have made it contingent on dealing with the legislation first and setting up the regulatory authority. That is another reason we need to move on this, and it needs to be done in the next year or so.

Regarding the matter of financial exploitation, in terms of the provision of IVF treatment outside Ireland, if we consider other countries similar to Ireland such as the Scandinavian countries, Belgium, Holland, France and Germany, IVF treatment is not cheaper in those countries or the United Kingdom compared to Ireland. It is cheaper in other southern eastern European countries and many people are travelling abroad to access that. Many of those couples come back with multiple pregnancies and most of the high risk multiple pregnancies related to assisted human reproduction that we see in Holles Street and the other big maternity hospitals in this country tend to be related to couples having donor egg treatment abroad with multiple embryos transferred. If we introduced public funding in Ireland, it would help many of the people who cannot afford treatment here to have their treatment here and would reduce some of that reproductive tourism for financial reasons. I believe they would be getting a better service. It is a stressful treatment and to have to travel to another country where they do not have the support of their family or friends around them while they are having treatment is not easy.

Mention was made of consanguinity and anonymity. Over the years, Irish embryologists have been very responsible in that regard. Ms Jenny Cloherty is a member of them. They have self regulated for donor sperm treatment in Ireland and have monitored among themselves the number of families that were created from any one sperm donor. There are proposals in the legislation to limit that. For treatments occurring in regulated clinics it will not be a problem, but we cannot control people travelling overseas, particularly for donor egg treatment, and it would be very difficult to get any numbers on that.

We spoke about the upper age limits. I do not know that the actual ages should be specified in the legislation because that is one of the detailed items that could come back to haunt us in a year or two and we would have to come back and change the legislation. We would prefer to see that implemented by the regulatory authority.

As regards surrogacy, we in the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists felt that the Bill proposes that surrogates should be allowed do surrogacy up to the age of 47. We believe there should be a younger age limit for surrogates because they are carrying the pregnancy altruistically and they will not have a child at the end of it. There are increased risks in pregnancy over the age of 40, which couples and women are willing to take on if they get a baby from it.

As the surrogate would not have a baby from it, we felt the upper age limit for surrogacy should be 40 years.

Senator Colm Burke asked if any jurisdiction had the correct structure. I attended a meeting last week with the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology at the Council of Europe which discussed legislation in place around Europe. It is safe to say no jurisdiction has ideal legislation. Many of the countries that introduced legislation in the past ten years have had to change it and there are many parliaments looking at assisted human reproduction legislation. If we have a debate and were to take on board most of the comments made in the document of the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, we could lead the way by having some of the best legislation in Europe. We are all very aware of the position in different countries. One of the advantages of the process having taken so long in Ireland is that we can benefit from the experience of other countries. For example, in the United Kingdom any payment for an egg or a sperm donation was banned, but it has subsequently had to row back on this provision. A small amount of compensation is now paid to people who donate eggs and sperm. It is not something from which somebody could make a living. This issue was discussed at the meeting of the Council of Europe and there is a very strong opinion that a person can be altruistic and also receive financial compensation, not just to cover expenses such as the bus fare to the clinic but also for the inconvenience of donating eggs. To donate eggs, a woman has to go through the equivalent of the first part of an IVF procedure. She has injections and scans and sees the side-effects of treatment. There is egg collection which, although safe, is still a surgical procedure which brings a risk of complications. The United Kingdom has rowed back on its original legislation and had to introduce a small payment. At last week's meeting when the comment was made that somebody could be altruistic and compensated, the example of doctors was given. They do their work primarily as an altruistic act, but they are paid for doing it and we do not think there is anything wrong with that.