Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 18:

In page 17, to delete lines 34 to 37, and in page 18, to delete lines 1 to 3, and substitute the following:"(ii) the donor of a gamete or embryo used in the DAHR procedure shall not be the parent of the child,

(iii) the information specified in section 31(3)in respect of the intending parent or parents, the child and a person who is, in relation to the child, a relevant donor, shall be recorded on the Register,

(iv) the child may, in accordance with section 33, access the information specified in section 31(3)(d)in respect of the donor referred to insubparagraph (iii)and seek to contact him or her, and”.

These amendments are technical revisions to the information to be provided to a person before he or she consents. In the case of amendment No. 18, an intending parent is informed that a gamete or embryo donor is not the parent of the child and that the identifying information of a relevant donor will be recorded in the national donor-conceived person register.

Amendment No. 21 clarifies the information to be provided to embryo donors. The effect of the amendment is to specify that when a person consents to donate an embryo, a relevant donor is entitled to seek information as to whether any child was born as a result of the donation, and the donor's personal details will be provided to the Minister for Health for the purposes of the national donor-conceived person register if the embryo is used in a donor-assisted human reproduction procedure.

As I explained before, what the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction recommended was that there should be an authority in place. What we have in the interim until the authority is established are these functions deriving from this legislation. They are only one part in respect of assisted human reproduction being carried out by the Department of Health.

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