Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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I appreciate that.

There has not been adequate consultation on what is effectively the banning of anonymous donors in the context of assisted reproduction. Currently, the overwhelming majority of couples who engage in assisted reproduction using donor sperm or ova are entirely dependent on anonymous donation. There is a risk that this legislation, while providing for recognition of the parentage of children born through assisted reproduction, will mean that a majority of parents with fertility issues who need assistance through donation will need to go abroad. It will create another Irish solution to an Irish problem. The issue of anonymous donation should have been part of the consultative process in which the Department of Health is engaged. I do not know why it is now in this Bill without the extensive consultation that was required.

With regard to the issues of parentage and consent to the use of embryos in further DAHR procedures, we are talking about, to take a simple example, a couple who have not used an embryo created from their own reproductive material and are now agreeing that it can be used to assist another couple. Perhaps this is a conversation that should have taken place on an earlier section. However, it is relevant to this section and to the definition of ovum that is applicable to determining what is an embryo in the context of the legislation. I have been part of this process and I have been on both sides of the divide in this committee, both as Minister and as an ordinary Member of the House. There is no reason for us to enact a definition that is now recognised by our neighbouring Parliament to be out of date. There is no reason for us to exclude the possibility in the area of assisted reproduction for couples who have fertility difficulties, and for those who do not but who want to correct an inherited deficiency that could have an impact on the life and welfare of the child to be born to them. There is no reason for not ensuring that we have an adequate definition that addresses this issue. This is not an issue of major complexity. I ask the Minister on Report Stage to look at the definition that is being used and to go back and examine the definition that was framed in the heads of the Bill as discussed by this committee.

I appreciate that the architecture of the Bill has been amended and, knowing how the system works, I do not doubt that some of that change was derived from the Attorney General's office. Without revealing too many secrets that I should not reveal, I can tell Members that during my three years as Minister there was many an occasion on which I had to engage in arm wrestling with the drafters in the Attorney General's office to ensure the legislation emerged out of that office in the form I wanted to see it. It seems to me there is a risk that this legislation is going to create a block, if the Minister introduces the provisions on anonymous donation any time soon, on assisted donor reproduction occurring at all in this country for the vast majority of individuals. We are at risk of creating a block on what I would describe as a crucial health intervention.

It is important to know where we are coming from. This area is currently unregulated. I agree that it is an issue for the Department of Health to introduce regulation for fertility clinics and, frankly, to introduce regulations or laws to deal with the issue of anonymous or non-anonymous donation, but why would we now change something and create a difficulty that does not currently exist? If someone is able to avail of this advance in reproductive medicine in this country today, why enact legislation that might, when it comes into force, create a block that does not currently exist? That is the point I want to make. We know from what the Minister for Health has said that there is no possibility that legislation dealing with the areas he is addressing will come before the Oireachtas and be enacted before the next election. It has taken decades for us in this State to deal with this matter. There is very little chance, whatever new Government comes into office in 2016, that the matter will be prioritised for revisiting by the Minister for Health. We should not create this difficulty. We should not leave parents in this State with a family history of mitochondrial disease in a position in which the only way they can have that corrected is by travelling to England.