Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

No, I mean the authority. It might be better if we had a different acronym for the authority because it is quite confusing.

Regulation is probably the way to deal with that because it might change over time. The Department of children might say that we need to keep in line with other things and might want to add something. I can say there is no intent here that providers would be conducting background checks. That is not the intent but I fully accept that from providers' perspective, it would be useful if they saw that written down. What clinicians have said to me is that sometimes they know instinctively that there is something there which means that this is not the right time for the intending parents. It is useful for them to be able to say, "Hang on a second, I am not entirely sure everything I am being told is true." There could be a risk to the child but they are not aware of it because they have no evidence of it but there is something that does not feel quite right. It at least allows for a mechanism to engage, when intending parents are asked to fill out the self-declaration.

Let us reflect on it. I accept the point around legal clarity but I think the way we deal with that is through regulations rather than in the legislation.