Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank both Deputies. I am more than happy to meet representatives of the AHR professional group. They are having important meetings with the officials at the moment. It is a technical matter, clinically and legislatively, and they are working through that. I gather they are having a good engagement. Of course, I am very happy to meet representatives of that group.

In response to Deputy Murnane O'Connor, we are taking this on and moving it as quickly as we possibly can. I am advised that Ireland will be leading the world when this legislation is in place. The advice I have is that no other country in the world is seeking to legislate at this level. It is ethically and legislatively complex. I and the two Ministers, Deputies McEntee and O'Gorman, have asked our Departments to do what would normally take several years in several months. This is legislatively complex. We are pushing as hard as we can to get as much as into the assisted human reproduction Bill and, to Deputy Duncan Smith's point, to pass the Bill in the next eight weeks.

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