Dr. Aoife Campbell:

When the Child and Family Relationships Act came into force, we had been importing donor sperm already from two major banks in Europe. Suddenly we could not use that anymore because the law now required that those donors consent specifically to be named on the Irish register and to have a specific Irish consent that was mandated by the Child and Family Relationships Act. We were anxious about it but it turned out that we developed very good working relationships with the clinics. They were very happy to comply. There was a lag time between donors’ signing the consent and those gametes becoming available to Irish patients. We worked with the Department of Health to accommodate that and that was allowed for. Despite many people’s anxieties beforehand, it has worked out quite well. Those international clinics were happy to comply, to work with us and to provide us with the documentation as required by Irish law. I hope that going forward, if we had similar requirements for surrogacy that good, reputable clinics would equally be happy to work with us. It has certainly been our experience for donor sperm.