Dr. Lydia Bracken:

I thank the Senator for her question. In the research I undertook with LGBT Ireland last year we were looking at the structure of LGBTQI+ parent families and their routes to legal recognition. The families that were recognised, where there were two legal parents, had gone through a route to parentage that is recognised under the 2015 Act. Essentially, there are two main ways in which that can happen. If a family has their child after the commencement of the Act on 4 May 2020, there is a pathway to parentage that allows for two parents - they could be the opposite sex or the same sex - to be jointly recognised as legal parents provided they have used a fertility clinic within Ireland and all of the relevant consents and declarations and so on have been given. Provided they meet all of those criteria, on the birth of the child both of the parents are legally recognised as parents as per their preconception intention.

There is another primary route to parentage that recognises the retrospective parentage for children who were conceived prior to the commencement of the legislation, that is, before 4 May 2020. There is a retrospective route available to some families if they had their child before 4 May 2020 and they meet various other criteria, one of which is where a gamete donor was used who was unknown and remains unknown to the families. In order to get that retrospective recognition of parentage the family cannot have used a known donor. If families meet the criteria, they can be recognised and some 50% of families were recognised. Unfortunately, many other families fell outside of the criteria for various reasons, one of which being that they had used a known donor. Having prioritised their child's right to identity, they cannot achieve retrospective recognition.

As I mentioned, the legislation does not cover DAHR that is undertaken abroad, even if the child is subsequently born in Ireland, or vice versa. If the parent had DAHR treatment in Ireland and the child was born in another country, that again falls outside of the recognition. Those are the main ways in which families fall outside of the legislation. Also, if the family did not use a fertility clinic, they would fall outside of the legislation. That might be referred to as a non-clinical procedure or an at-home procedure. If the family had their child through that form of DAHR, they are not covered by the legislation either. Those are the primary omissions in respect of the legislation.