Seanad debates

Thursday, 26 March 2015

Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Committee Stage

 

10:30 am

Photo of Rónán MullenRónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am going to do something that perhaps I do not do often enough and perhaps not many of us here do often enough and say that I got it wrong. I would like to refine the context in which I referred to commodification because it is a word that should be used in a very precise and specific manner only. First, I am only referring to the commodification of gametes. Second, I am only talking about the donor-assisted human reproduction context. Third, I actually have sympathy with those who might have an aspiration to donor-assisted human reproduction on grounds of infertility so I exclude according to that.

I reserve the right to use the word "commodification" otherwise because this is about the commodification of gametes. There is that category where people are dealing with infertility that I feel sympathy as everybody rightly does. What I am saying is that even in this instance there is a prior right, which is the right of a child not to be separated from his or her parentage - his or her genetic parentage, his father or his mother or her father or her mother.

I note that Senator Power reserves words such as insulting and other words of censure for what I have to say, but not for what Senator Norris has to say.

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