Results 9,941-9,960 of 20,459 for speaker:Frances Fitzgerald

Seanad: Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Committee Stage (26 Mar 2015)

Frances Fitzgerald: I do not want Senator Mullen to misunderstand what I said. I was referring to establishing a hierarchy of family types whereby some family types would be entitled to access to the procedures, which is what the amendment does.

Seanad: Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Committee Stage (26 Mar 2015)

Frances Fitzgerald: The purpose of the amendment is to ensure intending parents have counselling on the consequences of having a child through donor assisted reproduction before undertaking the procedures. In broad terms, I accept the principle that intending parents receiving fertility treatment should receive counselling. That is correct. From my discussion with clinics, I understand they regard counselling...

Seanad: Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Committee Stage (26 Mar 2015)

Frances Fitzgerald: Yes.

Seanad: Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Committee Stage (26 Mar 2015)

Frances Fitzgerald: All right. I note the Senator's concerns and the points that have been made.However, the area is completely unregulated at present and we are beginning to put legislation around certain aspects of AHR and DAHR. The purpose of amendment No. 5 is to raise the minimum age of a donor to 21 years. This appears to be to match the minimum age of intending parents, although we do have the opposite...

Seanad: Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Committee Stage (26 Mar 2015)

Frances Fitzgerald: I wish to explain why the age of 21 was set as a minimum for intending parents. This was arrived at in consultation with the Department of Health following policy work and research it had carried out in this area. The Department of Health advised that, while it would vary a bit depending on the cause, it takes approximately three years to arrive at a diagnosis of infertility. There may be...

Seanad: Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Committee Stage (26 Mar 2015)

Frances Fitzgerald: The effect of these amendments is to allow continued anonymity on the part of donors of gametes or embryos. This would run counter to the careful provisions we have made to safeguard the identity rights of a child born through donor assisted human reproduction. These provisions are aimed at securing the child's genetic identity and to ensure he or she has an opportunity to find out the...

Seanad: Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Committee Stage (26 Mar 2015)

Frances Fitzgerald: It is something intrinsic to a person's sense of self. If we took Senator Crown's proposed route, we would fly in the face of the recommendations made by the joint committee after it examined the public policy aspects of this issue. We would also be ignoring emerging international best practice and the spirit of the provisions in the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child on the right to...

Seanad: Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Committee Stage (26 Mar 2015)

Frances Fitzgerald: The answer to Senator Crown's question on the donor details is "No". Those details will not be sent to the registry. In response to Senator Norris, the information the clinics have varies quite significantly. Some of the donations they receive are anonymous, so the clinics do not have much information on them. What we are doing is moving to a situation where information on donations will...

Seanad: Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Committee Stage (26 Mar 2015)

Frances Fitzgerald: They have some DNA information, but they do not have the full genetic information we say should be available.

Seanad: Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Committee Stage (26 Mar 2015)

Frances Fitzgerald: What we are speaking about in regard to the information we would want to have available would be the name being made available to the child on becoming an adult, or earlier if the parents wanted that information to be given to the child sooner. That is a more developed concept in regard to information.

Seanad: Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Committee Stage (26 Mar 2015)

Frances Fitzgerald: This amendment relates to contact details being provided on an ongoing basis. There is no clear method to enforce this and there is a risk that if we make it mandatory, a later failure of a donor to update his or her contact details could somehow affect the legal parentage of the child. In this day and age it is relatively easy to trace people, based on the level of information required....

Seanad: Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Committee Stage (26 Mar 2015)

Frances Fitzgerald: Amendment No. 10 specifies that a donor who revokes consent may subsequently use his or her own gamete for an assisted reproduction procedure in relation to which he or she is an intending parent. I am happy to confirm there is no barrier in the legislation to his or her doing so the amendment is not necessary. Shall I deal with amendments Nos. 13, 14 and 16?

Seanad: Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Committee Stage (26 Mar 2015)

Frances Fitzgerald: Amendments Nos. 13, 14 and 16 all refer to the use of embryos by intending parents. The principle behind these amendments is that, where an embryo has been formed for use by a couple and the couple subsequently decide not to use it as joint intending parents and if only one of those intending parents has a genetic connection to the embryo, the intending parent with the genetic connection...

Seanad: Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Committee Stage (26 Mar 2015)

Frances Fitzgerald: The couple can both agree in the event of the embryo not being used. Obviously, the embryo is not in any circumstances destroyed. They can both agree that there would be onward donation if it is not being used with the consent of both. That is what I mean by directed donation.

Seanad: Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Committee Stage (26 Mar 2015)

Frances Fitzgerald: It must be the consent of both. Several Senators have raised the posthumous issue but that is not being dealt with in this legislation. The assisted human reproduction Bill will deal with that issue subject to consent.

Seanad: Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Committee Stage (26 Mar 2015)

Frances Fitzgerald: Senators will recognise that the approach cuts across the consent provisions completely. I empathise with the Senator’s point but the consent provisions we have made provide very specifically that when an embryo is formed for the use of a couple, both must consent to any onward donation.

Seanad: Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Committee Stage (26 Mar 2015)

Frances Fitzgerald: One can at the beginning say there will be a directed donation. If there is a disagreement at a later point, one cannot allow one partner to decide unilaterally on the use of the embryo. It has to be consensual. There have been several cases in the UK which have examined this issue. They were cases where the genetic material belonged to both but there was disagreement. It was found that...

Seanad: Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Committee Stage (26 Mar 2015)

Frances Fitzgerald: It would not be appropriate for the Minister to contact directly a donor conceived child to inform him or her of his or her status. That is the job of the parents. The safeguards we have put in place to ensure a child is informed when requesting a birth certificate are as far as we can go in this area. While I fully understand Senator Power's position on the issue of information, we are...

Seanad: Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Committee Stage (26 Mar 2015)

Frances Fitzgerald: Again, this is a children and family relationships Bill dealing with the issues I have already outlined. It is not an assisted human reproduction Bill. There are elements of AHR in it but it is not an AHR Bill. That is a matter for address into the future. It is important to note that. What we are trying to do is create a culture of openness. That is clear. There has not been a culture...

Seanad: Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Committee Stage (26 Mar 2015)

Frances Fitzgerald: Based on annual reports submitted by fertility clinics to the Health Products Regulatory Authority in Ireland, the demand for AHR services is increasing. In 2013, there were 7,939 treatment cycles of IVF and frozen embryo replacement and 6,574 embryo transfers. A total of 971 babies were born as a result of AHR procedures, which represents approximately 1.2% of all births, and 20% of those...