Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the fact that this Bill is in this House and that it is being progressed through the Chamber. It is to be hoped that it will be enacted as soon as is possible. I accept and endorse what other Deputies have said, which is that it is important that the legislation is not enacted with undue haste. I am, of course, very familiar with the provisions of the Bill. It was some considerable time ago when I, in a personal capacity, commenced drafting this legislation. I was determined that this area, which had been ignored for far too long, would be fully addressed. There was a need to update and modernise our laws on guardianship, custody of and access to children, parentage, using DNA fingerprinting to assess parentage and a whole range of other issues, including dealing with an area that had for too long been ignored, namely, assisted reproduction and surrogacy.

This Bill has gone through various phases. I drafted it as a Bill but discovered as Minister that the Attorney General's office would be very unhappy to be provided with a Bill. The very good and professional officials within the Department of Justice and Equality then turned it back into heads of a Bill and annotated it. I wish to mention, in particular, Conan McKenna, Carol Baxter and Dara Breathnach-----

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