Ms Ranae von Meding:

In terms of retrospective recognition and the amnesty in the 2015 Act, there is an amnesty for children who fall outside the framework where an anonymous donor was used prior to 2020 or where an international clinic was used prior to 2020. That is how my family and children were granted retrospective recognition. However, if someone has embryos that were created prior to 2020 and if they are not in an Irish clinic, there is no retrospective recognition. If they are in an Irish clinic and they do not meet the criteria but they are in an Irish facility and there are existing siblings generated from the same donor, there is a timeframe within which those embryos can be used. I believe it was a two-year period, but I am open to correction on that. There is a very limited window for retrospective recognition.

There is no retrospective recognition where a known donor was used prior to 2020, where a non-clinical procedure was used prior to 2020 or when a child is born abroad prior to 2020.

On the learnings, it was wonderful to have the 2015 Act put in place and to create this framework where once we had nothing. It was amazing for all the families who got that day to finally celebrate both parents being recognised and both being legally connected to their children. However, as I mentioned before it created a system in which some children were now more equal than others and it almost created a minority within a minority. You had all these LGBTQ+ families who had been created through donor-assisted reproduction and you can look at two children and say "now you have equality but you do not because you were conceived in a clinic and you were not or because you were born in the UK and you were born in Ireland". For me, that would be the biggest learning to take from that. We cannot create a system in which some children are treated more equally than others.