Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

First, I welcome our guests to the Gallery. Hello again.

Today is a good day for healthcare and people in Ireland. I came at speed to the Chamber from a launch of the new beds plan. We all agree it has been needed. Today we launched a plan for an additional 3,500 hospital beds. Everyone will welcome that over the next seven years. We have 1,200 beds open, another 440 under construction and we now have thousands more coming next year and the following years. It will make a big difference and it will be on a balanced regional basis. I am delighted to have come from that into the Chamber today to work with colleagues to get the assisted human reproduction Bill through Report and Final Stages in the Dáil.

I will thank and acknowledge a few people. First, are my Oireachtas colleagues. In the committee we spent a long time on this. As was mentioned, there was also a Joint Committee on International Surrogacy which produced a thoughtful and balanced report. I acknowledge the work across both Houses of the Oireachtas in supporting this Bill. I hope, and I think it has been acknowledged already, that I have taken as collaborative an approach as I can. Certainly, I know from when I was trying to get amendments to legislation, there is a lot more in this Bill than I managed to get across the line in many years previously. I am really trying to take a very open and collaborative approach to this, which is why so many of the amendments recognised Opposition amendments from Committee Stage.

I thank the advocacy groups for everything they have done and everything they continue to do. They have been central to this. Essentially, everything we are doing is in collaboration and discussion with them. We had many rounds of discussions while the Bill was being drafted and while we were putting the Committee and Report Stage amendments together. It has been a collaborative process. Not all the different advocacy groups or individuals in those groups will be happy with everything in the Bill. I acknowledge that. It has not been possible to do everything that everyone wanted. All the requests have come from one place, which is a desire for retrospective parentage, that is parentage for children people already have, or a desire to ensure people have the best possible chance of becoming a parent in the future. We have significantly amended and changed the Bill and included requests that came from civil society and different groups. As has been said, the Bill and the law will be stronger, more compassionate and more inclusive for that. I thank the advocacy groups for all their time.

I have to thank my officials. They really have put in a lot of work. I have put them under a lot of pressure. There are Bills that are a lot less complex than this one that are about halfway through drafting. We have gone from a standing start on international surrogacy to having almost a final Bill, the first of its kind anywhere in the world, in a short period. I have applied a lot of pressure, but the officials in the Department, the Office of the Attorney General and the other Departments have really worked very hard. My officials who are here with me today have put a huge amount of work into it. They are hugely invested in it. They have been engaging directly with colleagues here and with the advocacy groups and they are committed to making this happen. I thank them for that. They will be absolutely scarlet with that kind of focus.

I will lay out the process from here so that colleagues and intending parents will be aware of it. A few weeks ago, I was sitting with my officials, going through all the outstanding amendments we wanted to make. They were mainly in response to what advocacy groups and the Oireachtas were looking to do. I was concerned that, given the time required to go through all Stages in the House, if we were to wait for all the amendments, which needed to be in today, we would be at serious risk of the Bill not passing before the Dáil rises. As I said earlier, there is no way I could stand over that. Therefore, I spoke to the Ministers, Deputies McEntee and O'Gorman, and the Attorney General. We met and went through all the outstanding issues and we essentially had two options. Ultimately, they all agreed that we would not be ready given the complexity of some of the amendments and some of the requests we were trying to facilitate. We had a choice. We could have brought it in this Bill but we would have had to wait until September or October, probably even to get to today and certainly to the Seanad stage, which I did not want to do. Therefore, we have proceeded and we have taken a relatively small number of complex amendments, some of which were discussed today and some that were not, around expanding citizenship and parentage for situations where the parents are abroad. It is about expanding and making it more inclusive. We are proceeding with this and I am told we will have amending legislation ready to go as soon as the Dáil comes back into session. I hope it will go through Second and all the Stages quickly. We have discussed all the issues. That is how we have decided to do it.

The process, now that the Bill has been passed by the Dáil, is that I hope it will be in the Seanad on 10 June. We have to go through all Stages in the Seanad but we hope to do so quickly. My hope is that we do not need to amend the Bill in the Seanad, because if we do, we have to come back to the Dáil and that risks it not getting through before the Dáil rises. Therefore, my hope is that we will not be amending the Bill in the Seanad, partly for that reason but also partly because we have engaged closely with the Senators who are invested in this and I believe their various concerns and ideas have already been incorporated. I hope on 10 June we will get into the Seanad and I hope in one, two or three weeks we will get back for Committee and Report Stage, or as quickly as possible. There are hundreds, and some who are involved tell me thousands, of families in Ireland today where the mums and dads of children do not have recognition as parents. This is the first group of people who we must do right by through this legislation. Yes, we are putting in place future international surrogacy and expansion of donor-assisted human reproduction.

For example, because of this Bill, we will be able to expand donor-assisted IVF to same-sex couples which was not possible before. We are investing a lot of our time in the surrogacy parts of this but the donor-assisted human reproduction, which was the original Bill, means that really important benefits will accrue to individuals and couples desperate to have a child and it fits in very well with the publicly-funded IVF. The intention is that we will get this through All Stages in Seanad and get it straight up to the President. Hopefully, he will sign it. I will then very quickly commence the sections for the retrospective element. My officials and the Department of Justice officials have been engaged with the Courts Service now for some time. Ultimately the Courts Service will determine when the parents go into court. There are various things that they need to put in place but we are having the conversation with them now. We have been having it for some time. What we are saying is that from the Government’s and my perspective - in fact, I think that of all of us - parents can walk into that court for that important day for them as quickly as possible, and I am hoping that it is this summer. If I commence these sections at the end of June or the start of July, depending on when the President signs it, the hope would be that the Courts Service would be able to facilitate this quickly. We are working with it to see what can be done. We are, to some extent, as with any legislation that is commenced, reliant on the Court Services but our intention is that as soon as possible after commencement these mums, dads, boys, girls, older children and, in some cases, adult children can go into the High Court and get what is rightfully theirs which is full parental recognition. That is where it stands.

I thank colleagues again and once again welcome our visitors.

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