Ms Emma O'Friel:

What I am hearing is a lovely sentiment about adults wanting the best for adults. We all want that. I am not an expert, a professor or a doctor and may have only two years of medical training but I have enough of an understanding of embryology. I come from a medical family dating back three generations. Over the past three years, after my master's degree in psychology, I have been listening more than anything. I note the sentiment of wanting others to be happy. That is what Ireland is now working towards, thank goodness. I, too, am supposedly a rampant liberal and want everybody to have equality and rights, including the right to be happy and the right to choose whoever one wants to love. We are improving in all these areas, thankfully. However, standing back, I see that all of us adults express the great sentiment of wanting everybody to have everything that will make them happy. Among these sentiments are those concerning the really emotive subject of not being able to have a child. I have been in a position where I believed I would never have a child. It is the deepest pain one can possibly imagine. It is probably not the deepest as other people have other pains but it is a profound pain. One will do anything to solve the problem. One will try to find a child to pick up off the street or from a bush; it is painful. We can all relate to that emotion so I can therefore be very sympathetic to this cause.

The same applies to same-sex couples. Who does not want the same for them? Gay people have suffered horrifically, not only in Ireland. Again, that arouses emotion in us because we want them to have happiness, equality and children, the most valuable thing. All of that emotion can blur everything, however, and prevent us from moving our attention. It is all very positive and we are not seeing with foresight, much further down the line, the group of children who may be happy living with somebody who is not related to them, because he or she is a very good and loving person, but who are still suffering. Statistically, there will always be a large number who will be very happy with that situation but a substantial number will say that, no matter how loving their family is or how right their circumstances are ideologically, they are still suffering. All of us adults who want the best for each other have to consider the group of children who are part of our ideology. We should separate them out and listen to them.

For the past two years, I have been listening to adults talk. I have been listening to clinics, which I cannot help regarding as very marketing oriented and commercially oriented. There are many instances of it. When the Deputy talks about listening to the experts, she should note that in our submission we refer to thousands of people have experienced what I describe. We cannot discredit their views as evidence. They are not professors or doctors but human beings who have lived a life. This is not to say a gay parent could not be the best parent in the world, or the worst, because we are all human. Whether gay or straight, one is not better than the other. There are good parents in all situations. In life, unfortunately, we cannot solve all these inequalities and difficulties. I cannot say to someone that because that person is wonderful, kind and loving person, I will give him or her a child by going to find a donor. A donor is a human being. I cannot say I will find a woman to sacrifice her connection with the child so my partner can fulfil a longing. I do not see an answer that will fulfil that longing and let us all be equal in the way described because, unfortunately, nature has not given us that ability.