Mr. Shane Lennon:

I am delighted to attend this morning’s committee meeting. It is an honour and privilege to have the opportunity to speak with the committee today on behalf of Irish Gay Dads. I sit here with the committee today quite literally as a result of modern family planning, for I myself was born by IVF. In fact, I was one of the first children in Ireland to be born via IVF. Growing up, I and my brother knew how wanted we were and the struggles faced by our parents to conceive. Our mother would routinely tell us how, in her mind, her life really only began when she had children. After nearly ten years of failed pregnancies, miscarriages and near death, my parents welcomed me into this world. Therefore, as we celebrate 35 years since the first treatment took place in St. James’s Hospital, marking the beginning of the creation of tens of thousands of families throughout the country, I feel it quite apt to be speaking to the committee today as we debate the need to legislate the next progressive steps in Irish family planning.

My husband, Carlos, and I met some 12 years ago, and from day one we discussed our desire to have a family. In 2015, the same-sex marriage referendum created the first opportunity for our relationship to be formally recognised in Irish society and for us to be considered a family unit under Irish law. We married in 2018, thus creating the first foundation of our family. Since then, we have moved to create a life that could support our ambition to grow our family. It is an innate human desire to want to have a family, to raise a child and to create a higher meaning in one’s life. This innate desire does not go away. It is not selective to only some people but to us all, no matter our fertility, physical ability or sexuality.

Article 41 of Bunreacht na hÉireann sets out that it is my fundamental right as an Irish citizen and as a married person to make my own decisions when undertaking matters in relation to family planning. If marriage is the foundation to our family in our legal system, how can the same legal system not support the growth of my family? Without legislation to enable me to create a family, I am in a dichotomy of paying to be part of an Irish society that does not allow me to reap the benefits of same. How is it right that, in the eyes of the Revenue Commissioners, I am equal, the same as my friends and neighbours, but when it comes to my fundamental right to grow my family, I am prohibited?

Irish relationships and families are no longer being created in the traditional chronological order of yesterday, when one would meet someone, marry, buy a home and create a family. Men and women are meeting later in life and coupling later. More and more women are entering the workforce and focusing on their careers, as is their right. The new chronological order of creating a family is multifaceted. Thus, we are only going to see an increasing number of the population looking to assisted human reproduction, AHR, solutions in creating families. This includes international surrogacy.

The AHR Bill is, in my opinion, the single greatest advancement in Irish family planning since the creation of the State. It would be a travesty not to include international surrogacy in this historic Bill. I implore the committee to take action to make sure the vast majority of families created via surrogacy are not left behind and are not left to be second-class citizens in their own country.