Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I compliment the Minister and her staff on this extremely complex Bill. I will not deliver an eloquent speech. There have been enough of those already. We have seen the two sides of the coin and heard the sort of debate that will come from this Bill.

I want to take up Senator Crown’s last point on anonymity. I was blessed to be born into a family of 11. I came in the middle and always had clothes that were either too small or too big. All my siblings went forth and multiplied. I never knew anything about assisted human reproduction or anything like it. Since I came into this House, the Government has confronted me with issues I thought I would never have to deal with as an Irish male brought up to hide all those things away and not deal with them. We debated gender recognition a couple of weeks ago, now we are dealing with this area, and marriage equality is around the corner. I have to deal with these issues. That is why I am here. I am really concerned, as a result of contact from obstetricians over recent days, about anonymity for donors. The obstetricians are seriously concerned that we are rushing the Bill through and that there has not been sufficient consultation. They are concerned about donations from overseas and whether there will be legal issues involved. Will there be some comfort given to them that they will not find themselves on the wrong side of the criminal law if they continue to work with anonymous donations? It was interesting to find that in one clinic in the United States where people were allowed to identify themselves, only 90 donors out of thousands were willing to put their names forward.

It might sound ridiculous but there is always the possibility that if we start tracing back, we will also start tracing forward and people who are childless but were donors at an early stage in their lives may seek the protection of the court later in life to identify their children or offspring. That is a serious issue. None of us wants to answer a knock on the door to be told, “Here is your real dad”, or to have someone say, “Hi Dad, I’m Seamus”. We must deal with these issues. I would almost like that section of the Bill to be withdrawn to allow for greater debate and discussion by the professionals, people such as Senator Crown who know this area.

I have heard a great deal today about the rights of the child. What about the rights of the teenage student who donates for whatever reason and it comes back to haunt him? We know the story of the lady in England who traced her biological father. These are serious issues. I am not so sure we should be trying to run them through this House in one week. What the Minister has done in bringing forward this Bill is amazing but it is massive. I fear this will be another Irish Water situation. On Friday this Bill will pass out of this House, go to the President and be signed whenever. I understand that another Bill from the Minister for Health must pass first. I am a little concerned about anonymity. I have met only one person who needed this treatment and I would not wish on anyone the pain and suffering she and her husband went through to have their child. At some stage in the future one has to tell one’s child and the child’s birth certificate has a dirty great stamp on it saying there is more information about him or her than the fact that he or she was born. Then the child has to trace that. There is a great deal in this Bill that will cause huge problems for families. I will table one or two amendments on Committee Stage although I do not expect they will be accepted.