Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have been doing a lot of listening and am trying to process so many things. I am considering whether we move to a situation where we nearly have to prove every single ethical framework conversation, such as love and compassion for surrogate mothers, and try to balance that with the fact we just need to exercise children's rights. At what stage do we balance those two things against each other? People who have this lived experience are held responsible, in a sense, to keep portraying how much they care about the process, or care about the women who have carried the child for them and so on. At what stage do we say that is one part of it, but we need to do something?

Ms von Meding spoke a lot about the Children and Family Relationships Act and what we need to do to improve that. How do we get to that? At the end of the day, we will never be able to account for every single thing that happens in every single jurisdiction. It should not be constantly on the people here today to have to keep proving they are good people. It is really hard. They are saying, "I am worthy, I am good". How do we shift that? How do we move into actually looking into the raw detail of it and what we need to do to exercise children's and parenting rights in Ireland and take that responsibility away from the representatives? It is on us as well to stop looking for that proof of goodness or proof of ethics and figure out a way to do that as legislators in terms of frameworks and where we can and cannot regulate.

I was coming up with questions in my head. I was intrigued by Ms Wheatley's meeting with Ivana and I wondered if that was an optional matter rather than a protocol. If I start asking those questions, they are so relative to every single situation that, regardless of how Ms Wheatley answers that, she cannot account for every single place in the world. These questions are so individual and so relative to people's experiences that I am trying to figure out in my own head how we move away from that and figure out how we ensure our legislation in Ireland is reflective of our obligations to children and families. That is more an observation. I am thinking out loud about what we need to do. Maybe Ms von Meding would like to come in on the Children and Family Relationships Act because she focused on that in her presentation. Where does that Act have and not have jurisdiction? Where can it claim jurisdiction and so on? What do we need to do on that?