Professor Nóirín Hayes:

I would like to come in. This is a point to which I was alluding across the general references I made in my opening statement and the language of the Bill needs to be reconsidered to take account of the child across the age range, not just at the point of birth, but beyond that. That has implications for support and advice services. It has implications for raising awareness in society as a whole. The reality is there and therefore we need to be careful to counterbalance the previous, overly powerful role of the clinic, the parent and the State. It can be done.

We are coming to this late and for that reason, we have an opportunity to develop a model legislation in which we really take account of what the research is saying. There are good examples here. I have talked about the need to listen to the voices of people who have gone through this process because we have a lot to learn from those voices. We should take that on board in terms of the supports and that feeds, to some extent, into the observations that were made here. The language of the Bill is not sufficiently robust in terms of the child across the age range and the State support for the parents of that child, to guide the parents on the importance of openness and transparency and to support the parent-child dyad as they progress through life. There is no doubt that there will be points at which tensions can arise and information can create difficulties and problems. The likelihood is that, if we are thinking about those tensions at this stage, they can be handled rather better than if we are not thinking about them at all.