Dr. Joanna Rose:

There is an idea in the UK that if parents are encouraged to tell their children, that is enough but the vast majority of people who are donor conceived are not told so it is very important that if these practices are to be proceeded with, to make sure that the State is not complicit in law in children being misinformed about their medical history. Narelle's law was developed in Victoria, Australia, as a result of somebody dying from having the wrong medical history. There were eight children in eight different families who were predisposed to the same medical history but they were not necessarily informed that they were donor conceived so they have a "Time to Tell" campaign in Victoria.

If Ireland is to model its legislation on anything, I would not go for the UK model, rather I would opt for the Victoria model of Narelle's law at the least. My court case established that we have a human right under Article 8 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to know our identities but that is irrelevant if one does not know that his or her human right is being deprived because of a misleading birth certificate. With all of these gene tests that are available from Ancestry.com to Family Tree DNA, I am on all of these support groups where people are finding out in their 60s that they are donor conceived and that they have been lied to and misled all of their lives. The anger that people invariably feel towards their parents and towards a system that was complicit in that type of deception is intense. It is vital, if Ireland is to proceed with this, that it at least legislates for transparency about this taking place for the next generation in order that they know that they cannot be lied to and that the State is not complicit in misleading them.