Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire. The Minister is welcome, but I am sorry to say that while there are features of the Bill that are unobjectionable and indeed desirable, this is the legislation that will destroy her legacy. She was the Minister who piloted the children's referendum through the Oireachtas and to a majority vote in the referendum, although the validity of the referendum is currently under court scrutiny. However, she brought the referendum forward as a measure designed to secure constitutional protection for children's best interests. Unfortunately, this legislation wrecks her credentials, and those of the Government, as defenders of the best interests of children. This legislation contemplates and facilitates a very fundamental attack on a child's rights, by allowing some children to be deprived of the right to be brought up by their own mother and father or, in any event, by a mother and father.

Joe Kennedy, the father of President John F. Kennedy, was a successful investor who made a fortune in the 1920s. He avoided the crash of 1929 by withdrawing his investments before the market collapsed. The story goes that Kennedy said that when he heard the shoeshine boy at the subway telling him about his own investment strategy, he knew the market was at risk. He could spot groupthink and he knew the damage it could cause. We suffered disastrous policies in this country when the main political parties supported a system of groupthink and economic dogma based on popular misconceptions around property and banking. We went for years with very little in the way of meaningful challenge to the prevailing popular consensus. We need only look around our towns, villages and unfinished housing estates to see where the fashionable, popular consensus has led us. Important questions merit detailed and careful consideration. We should be guided by values and sober reflection when faced with making major changes to society. Where would we be now if the bank guarantee was debated and considered, instead of being rushed through? If that is true of economic policy, how much more true is it of the welfare of children?

With this legislation, history is repeating in the social sphere, the tragedy of the groupthink that saw the Celtic tiger boom and then bust. Tendentious debate within the media and the sameness in the viewpoint of the political parties around this legislation are the opposite of what the public is entitled to expect from the journalistic and legislative class. It is remarkable and tragic that this Bill saw no substantial changes in the Dáil. It is farcical that we are running this Bill through the Seanad like an express train, in one week's sitting, alongside the marriage referendum legislation which the hasty and under-scrutinised passage of this Bill is designed to facilitate. Let us recall that the Animal Health and Welfare Act has 78 sections and took 13 months before enactment, as every line was pored over, searching for problems and unforeseen consequences. This Bill has more than 172 sections and the Government wants to enact it within weeks. Obviously the Government believes animal welfare deserves more careful consideration than children's welfare.

As much as I decry the lack of scrutiny of this legislation in the Dáil and in the media, I am even more surprised by the behaviour of those bodies and individuals who claim to represent the interests of children and who, perhaps this is the problem, often receive taxpayers' money to represent the interests of children. I read carefully the report of the Ombudsman for Children and the consultation paper of the Children's Rights Alliance regarding this legislation. Nowhere in either document was it affirmed that a child had a right to be raised by his or her natural mother and father where possible. Neither was there any reference to the explicit provisions of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child where a child has a right to parents in his or her life, save for a reason pertaining to that child's welfare. The UN treaty references to parents do mean "mother" and "father". That is no more than what most people all over the world have believed since the dawn of civilisation, namely, that children are best brought up by their biological parents. I have heard Geoffrey Shannon, the special rapporteur on child protection, acknowledge more than once that "two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage" provide the "gold standard" environment for the upbringing of children. Nowhere does the legislation acknowledge, reflect or attempt to promote that, which is shameful.

I am sorry to say that the children's rights lobby, by supporting this legislation where it does, has undermined, as has the Minister, any claim to champion the interests of children. How can I say otherwise when it and the Minister support a Bill that fails to recognise that children have a right to be loved and cared for by the man and woman who conceived them - their mother and father - who each have given them one half of their genetic and family history. This legislation drives a coach and four through certain children's right to their mothers and fathers. This Bill states that an egg or sperm donor "is not the parent of a child born as a result of that procedure and has no parental rights and duties in respect of the child." Whether that donor has earned the right to be a parent is a separate issue. This legislation should not facilitate the donation business and I will return to the matter on Committee Stage. In summary, where is the protest from supposed "children's rights" defenders at the idea that the man or woman who gives one half of one's identity can be legally denied to be one's parent simply because the State and the adults involved will it to be so?

There is still an opportunity to place children's rights, as opposed to the desires of adults, at the centre of the legislation. I have no confidence that the Minister has any willingness to do so. However, I will table a series of reasoned amendments which seek to place children's interests and rights back at the centre of the legislation. Failure to ban egg and sperm donation in the Children and Family Relationships Bill is a big mistake. The failure to allow children born of assisted human reproduction to know their genetic parents until they are adults is also a mistake. It is difficult to comprehend that in the first draft of the legislation it was not proposed to allow any right for children to know their genetic parents. That shows how far removed from children's welfare and best interests the class of people who have devised the legislation were, until a hasty amendment later in the day to at least give children the dignity of finding out who their parents are if they seek the information when they are 18, yet people say this is a children-friendly piece of legislation. What rot. To reiterate, the singular failure of this legislation is that it removes, as a matter of policy, any preference for a child's genetic mother and father to be in his or her life. That is unfair and unjust.

The real test for people, both in this House and in government, who claim to support children's rights, will be whether they have the courage to support amendments which seek to protect a child's right to his or her genetic mother and father. We have arrived at an unhappy juncture in Ireland when the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction can rhetorically pose the question, "Should science do everything that science can do without other consideration", and the answer seems to be a resounding "Yes" because it seems to be all about what adults want. We are now technologically proficient in creating life through artificial means, yet the people in power are either hopelessly naive, or morally bankrupt. Commentators proclaim that all a child needs is "love", without reference to family, kinship, blood ties, history or any of those things which give us identity and a sense of place in the world, and indeed which give us love.

If the Bill becomes law in its current form, the means of science will now be employed only to serve the ends identified by the adults and fertility professionals involved, separate from all considerations of children's welfare, or indeed justice towards the child. However, it was the Minister for Health, Leo Varadkar, who said in 2010, "Every child has the right to a mother and father and, as much as is possible, the State should vindicate that right." How unfortunate, and how unexplained by the way, that he should have moved away from his previously expressed views about the prior rights of children. This Bill shows the State not only denying the right of certain children to their fathers and mothers but, in particular, separating such children from their genetic mothers or fathers or from both genetic parents during their formative years, and that is supposed to be just fine for the children. The Beatles sang "All you need is love" but that was never meant to be a legislative proposal. There is a right to the love of each genetic parent, and it should not be deliberately interfered with, except for exceptional cases where the child's own welfare dictates.

I have deliberately avoided any significant reference to the proposed referendum to change the meaning of marriage. I have said in the public domain and I repeat again, that the timing of this radical Bill is all about pretending that the change in the constitutional meaning of marriage has no implications for children's rights to a father and a mother.That is yet another way in which children's rights are being subverted for more political adult-centred purposes in this legislation. This political cynicism is futile, however, because the issues of the referendum and this legislation remain intricately related. The Bill will need to be radically amended to restore the primacy of children's rights and welfare. The Constitution, if it is changed in the way the Government proposes, will block the Oireachtas from restoring the prior right of a child to a father and mother - where possible, its own father and mother - in every situation. This legislation, if it passes in this form, will therefore be central to the referendum campaign.

Let me ask the Minister these relevant questions in conclusion. If the referendum fails, will the Government accept that the reason is public concern about a child's right to a father and a mother? Will the Government then accept that the sections of this legislation which contemplate the deprivation of a child's right to a father and a mother, which are fundamentally misconceived and unjust, will have to be changed? In that event, will the Minister commit to revisiting the legislation?