Ms Elaine Cohalan:

On the impact of the Children and Family Relationships Act, the Act was commenced in May 2020 and it allowed for prospective recognition. As Professor O'Mahony has outlined, it is an all or nothing approach. There are prospective arrangements for any child born after May 2020 if he or she met the criteria, that is, was conceived in a Irish fertility clinic either through IUI, IVF or reciprocal IVF, if he or she was conceived using either a traceable or a known sperm donor and the child was born in Ireland for same-sex female couples. Since that Act has been commenced hundreds of families have had automatic rights and the automatic relationship between the children and parents recognised upon birth. For those children, the details of their conception and their donors are put forward for the national donor registry. Those families are recognised as equal families before the law in Ireland.

Some people have referred to an amnesty but there were retrospective provisions outlined in the Act once it commenced. Families who did not meet those criteria but met other criteria, that is, if they were conceived in an Irish or an international clinic through IUI, IVF or reciprocal IVF, either using anonymous or traceable sperm donors and were born in Ireland, then those children and those families were able to apply for what is called a declaration of parentage through the courts system. Again, hundreds of families have availed of that opportunity and now have their families recognised as equal before the law.

There were anomalies. The impact of that, while a very joyful and welcome provision and an Act that was commenced in 2020, it also has left many families, including my own out of the legislation, and in some cases for seemingly incomprehensible reasons. For example, a lot of the legislation is built around the child's right to his or her identity. In our own case, we specifically chose to have a known donor in our conception for that purpose so that our child would always know who their donor was. If one had a known donor and conceived or had one's child before May 2020 then one was left out. If one had a known donor after May 2020 then one were provided for, so that is a very strange anomaly in the legislation. Equally, I refer to those families who conceived children outside of clinical settings. As I am sure all the members are aware, in the case of same-sex partnerships, marriage and couples, fertility is not always the reason they cannot conceive children and they do not necessarily need the services of a fertility clinic to conceive a child using a donor. Those cases are also left out of the Act. For the children who were born outside of Ireland, a child can be born outside of Ireland purely through happenstance such as early delivery while on holiday or for many other reasons. A child who was born outside of Ireland is also left out of the provisions.

The impact has led to a split in the already marginalised community. Historically, the LGBTQ+ community has been marginalised and discriminated against in Ireland. Now it is further so, by splitting people into two groups, people who qualify for tier 1 parentage and those who do not meet the criteria. We will see the impact of that over the years and it is already very evident.

Finally, I refer to the Children and Family Relationships Act in respect of identifiable donors. In terms of equality for children, we fully support children having access to information on their genetic origins. In some cases, families have embryos in clinics in Ireland and abroad that were created prior to the commencement of the Act, which may not meet the criteria around identifiable requirements. In those cases a very short period was put into the Act during which families had to use or lose their embryos, which seems like a very harsh approach to take. We have many families in our community where they have children who were able to avail of retrospective provisions through the Children and Family Relationships Act.

They will have identical siblings born to them in the future who will not be able to avail of that equality simply because they were not conceived or born on time or within the timeframe of the Act. That is another gap that maybe needs to be addressed within that.