Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

I also thank Deputy Paul Murphy for adding his personal story to the debate. I wish him and his partner the best of luck in their endeavours. The issues at the heart of this Bill are incredibly important and significant. They range from the families which desperately seek to have a child but cannot to the rights of the child to have a family and know their mother and father to the rights that affect the mother who carries to term. There are many examples, unfortunately, of the dark exploitation of surrogate mothers in poor countries around the world. We must be cognisant of that. It is very important that as we develop this Bill that we do so in a balance of all those rights. There will be many different opinions around where the balance lies and there is potentially significant human cost if the equilibrium of rights is not protected. This is an extremely complex moral area. Some would say that it is a minefield.

Many families around the country have been broken-hearted in their efforts over years to have a child. The challenges faced by those families cannot be over-estimated in any way. We, as a country, need to make sure that couples seeking to have a child are given every support possible to have their son and daughter. We also have to make sure that the rights of the child are protected. I believe that the child is probably the most important consideration in this whole discussion. Wherever the balance lies with the competing rights, we need to ensure that the full rights of the child are protected. In relation to what the previous speaker said, we have a long and difficult history in relation to children struggling to find who their biological parents are. I am not comparing assisted human reproduction to what happened in the mother and baby homes or to the shocking history of illegal adoption in the State; they are different in their intent and delivery. However we cannot have a situation where children do not have access to the information about their biological parents or the mother who carried them. We need to ensure that the information is accessible to them in a practical way in order that they can trace their biological parent. We owe it to future generations that we get this right. It would be incredible if we discuss this Bill and the future regime in parallel with discussing the rights of children who have been adopted or who have been born in mother and baby homes and that we do not learn from the mistakes of those years in this respect.

International surrogacy can take place by many ways: an intended mother's egg and the intended father's sperm; the intended mother's egg and donor sperm; the surrogate mother's egg and the intended father's sperm; the surrogate mother's egg and the donor's sperm; the donor egg and the intended-father sperm and the donor egg and sperm or the donor embryo. These are all significantly different levels of surrogacy and complexity and all have different effects on children. Motherhood exists in all these situations but in some, it exists in multiple forms. There can be a birth mother, a biological mother and an intended mother all at the same time for a child. The idea that motherhood is split three ways for a child is potentially a significant difficulty and challenge to a child in their future. There are also different types of surrogacy: there is altruistic surrogacy where the surrogate mother wants to help the couple to try to have their child without getting financial reward and there is also commercial surrogacy, where the surrogate mother who carries the baby does so in exchange for payment. These types of surrogacy arrangements are unregulated in this State. Like many people, I am very concerned with the dangers presented by commercial surrogacy. It can lead to significant exploitation of women in poor countries. Many countries have banned commercial surrogacy due to the threat of exploitation. In India, for example, in one year in one province, €2.3 billion was raised through commercial surrogacy leading to moves to ban the practice there. For-profit surrogacy is banned in Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, Britain and most of Australia. Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain prohibit all forms of surrogacy. So actually, the legalisation or regulation of the provision of surrogacy would not mean that Ireland was joining the rest of the world on this but rather that it is leaving it. There are only three countries in Europe where commercial surrogacy is legal, namely, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. There are serious ethical concerns around the surrogacy agencies in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. There are many examples where safeguards around the sale and trafficking of children have not been put in place.

Any law that discusses surrogacy must ensure that is not allowed in any fashion and is completely prohibited. Ellen Coyne has reported for the Irish Independenton some of these shocking situations. She reported on a woman who was pregnant with a surrogate baby but was not able to flee the war in Ukraine as the contracts signed would not be applicable if that mother left Ukraine. She reported in 2012 that a Californian lawyer was given a prison sentence for her role in what was described as a baby-selling ring involving Ukrainian surrogates. Ellen Coyne has also reported on the BioTexCom surrogacy company that stated on its website that the cheapest surrogacy in Europe is in Ukraine because it is the poorest European country. The same company also advertised a Black Friday sale surrounded by pictures of children. I find it very difficult to raise those shocking situations in the Dáil, especially because it is such a sensitive sector and because there are so many families who want the best for their children and would not tolerate that type of situation but who still want to access a service that provides surrogacy to them. However, it is really important. We have a responsibility to ensure profiteering and exploitation are rooted out completely. It must not be tolerated. To have a conversation and not recognise the existence of it in this sector would be absolutely wrong as well.

This Bill governs surrogacy that occurs in Ireland, not-for-profit surrogacy and surrogacy where there is a genetic link between one of the intending parents and the child but it has nothing to say about the continuing practice of international commercial surrogacy. That is a problem and a difficulty. I am on the committee that met for the first time today to discuss international surrogacy. I am learning a lot about it and would say much, if not most of the country has a lot to learn about this whole area and all the difficulties and complexities that exist in it.

I am also concerned about the increasing practice there is to screen out people with disabilities via prenatal diagnostics. We live in a very harsh world at the moment. We celebrated World Down Syndrome Day this week yet in countries such as Iceland and Denmark no children are born with Down Syndrome anymore due to non-invasive pregnancy testing that leads to the screening out of children in most cases, and they are aborted before they make it to term. In the last week, the parties in the North of Ireland voted for abortion for children with Down Syndrome right up to birth - an incredible situation. This Bill will allow for prenatal diagnostics, I understand, of embryos of children with disabilities. As we know from science, an embryo is a living individual human being and this Bill will allow for the regulation of those embryos being discarded and destroyed.

For many people living with the complexities involved in assisted human reproduction it is important we have an honest, frank and open debate here. We must ensure that at the heart of this conversation and this Bill we recognise the real need of many couples to have a child and the real difficulties and challenges that process holds for them. However, we must also ensure the rights of the child are central to this. Those must be the pre-eminent rights in this whole process. We cannot make the mistakes of previous generations in this country with respect to identity, access to biological information and access to information about mothers and fathers and mothers who carry the child. That information must be available to children. I also believe very strongly that if we create a situation where commercial surrogacy is allowed in this State, that will allow for situations of profiteering, exploitation and for the difficulties I have mentioned to exist in the future.

I hope the Minister will be able to take amendments. We have very regularly seen Bills go through this House where there has been a very strict adherence to the letter of the original drafted Bill and no amendments allowed through. On a Bill of this importance, the Government has a responsibility to listen to the collective wisdom, if you can call it that, of the elected representatives here.

Is Bille uafásach tábhachtach é seo agus tá go leor cearta ag baint leis. Tá cearta na máthar agus an athar atá ag iarraidh páiste ach nach bhfuil in ann páiste a bheith acu iad féin i gceist. Bíonn deacrachtaí ag na tuismitheoirí sin agus caithfimid a bheith ag smaoineamh orthu mar níl sé éasca. Tá brú uafásach ar na clanna sin de bharr na ndeacrachtaí sin. Caithfimid smaoineamh freisin faoi chearta na bpáistí. Tá go leor rudaí mícheart déanta sa tír seo go stairiúil mar gheall ar pháistí a tháinig trí na hionaid máithreacha agus páistí agus iad siúd a bhí adopted in aghaidh an dlí. Caithfidh go mbeidh rochtain ag na páistí seo ar eolas faoina dtuismitheoirí, faoi shláinte a dtuismitheoirí agus faoin máthair a d’iompair iad le linn an iompair chlainne freisin. Caithfimid smaoineamh ar na máithreacha sin. Níor cheart go mbeadh siad ina n-íospartaigh san earnáil seo. Tá go leor fianaise ann thart timpeall na cruinne faoi mhí-úsáid na mban seo, brabús a bheith déanta as an tseirbhís a thugann siad agus an easpa cearta atá acu. Tá fadhbanna ollmhóra sa tír seo, agus sa domhan seo, mar gheall ar dhaoine atá trafficked. Nuair a bhíonn brabús i gceist agus nuair a bhíonn na dlíthe lag i dtíortha atá bocht de ghnáth, bíonn deis exploitation ann. Sin an fáth go bhfuil go leor tíortha tar éis dlíthe a thabhairt isteach a chuireann cosc ar an tseirbhís seo. Caithfimid smaoineamh ar an rud céanna a dhéanamh sa tír seo.

See this speech in context