Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am very happy to talk about them now. They are coming up in amendment No. 27. I think the Deputy may have tabled amendments as well, but I am very happy to discuss them now. The questions she has raised are exactly the same questions I have raised. The Bill, as I understand it, and the officials can correct me if I am wrong because there is an awful lot of detail in here, is as the Deputy has outlined. Let us take the example of a man and a woman, where the sperm and eggs are frozen and they both consent that, in the event one of them dies, the other, posthumously, could avail of the gamete, be that an egg or a sperm. The Bill would allow the woman to use the sperm to get pregnant through assisted human reproduction using her deceased partner's sperm. There is a stipulation that there would have to be a wait of a year before it could be done, which is not one I am comfortable with. I think the original thinking in the Bill as drafted some time ago was that there would be a period of mourning and grief. My view is that people can decide what they want to decide if they have full agency and they do not need to be asked to wait a particular time. We are reflecting on this and I may bring amendments on the time period on Report Stage. One part of it is that a woman can do this but must wait a year, and I am not entirely comfortable with that waiting period.

Second, as Deputy Shortall said, the man cannot access the frozen eggs. Obviously, he would need a surrogate to do that. As we are now legislating for surrogacy, I have posed the Deputy's exact questions to the officials. I think this requires a bit more consideration and that we need to reflect and see if we will amend this on Report Stage. I am not yet satisfied that I have a satisfactory answer as to why the woman can access the sperm but the man cannot access the eggs. There is a precedent for it, as we know. It is more straightforward for the woman to access the sperm and then, through AHR, seek to become pregnant herself. It is obviously more difficult for the man because it is necessary to find a surrogate. The question is whether this should be enough to say that he is not allowed to try to access that option. I am not convinced. I thank the Deputy for the amendments because it helped to kick off exactly this conversation. What I want to do is reflect further on this issue. I will be very happy to meet the Deputy or, indeed, have informal briefings with members to get their views and then come to a position for Report Stage.