Seanad debates

Thursday, 26 March 2015

Children and Family Relationships Bill 2015: Committee Stage

 

10:30 am

Photo of Jim WalshJim Walsh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 30:



In page 28, between lines 26 and 27, to insert the following:“(c) the operator of a DAHR facility is certain that the use of the gamete would not exceed the limit on the number of children who may be born as a result of donor gametes from one individual donor. That limit should be a maximum of three births per individual donor.”.
The purpose of this amendment is to place a strict limit on the number of children who might be born as a result of donor gametes from one individual donor. I am suggesting that the limit should be set at a maximum of three. It should be illegal to use donor gametes for the purpose of creating more than three children from the same donor material.

The reason behind this is reasonably obvious. Consanguinity is the kernel of it. It is the quality of being descended from the same ancestor as another person. It is vitally important that we restrict the number of births resulting from any one individual donor in donor-assisted human reproduction.

It worries me that the Bill would allow a donor to have an infinite number of births to emerge from those donations. There is no control at all. That is totally unacceptable to me and to many reasoned people. I would be surprised if the Minister herself did not find that unacceptable. When Britain banned donor anonymity in 2005, the HFEA set a limit of ten families within Britain that can be created using the gametes of an individual donor. Irish law should go further by limiting the number who may be born from the same donor.

Section 34(1)(b) states that a donor-conceived child may request the Minister to provide him or her with the number of persons who have been born as a result of the use in a DAHR procedure of a gamete donated by the relevant donor, and the sex and year of birth of each of them. The Bill acknowledges the importance of knowing the number of half-siblings a donor-conceived child may have, so we should try to ensure that no donor-conceived child has innumerable half-siblings in innumerable countries. I accept that this is difficult for one state to do. There really needs to be at least an EU-wide provision for restriction and regulation in this regard. We need to start it here and should not start from the base at which this Bill starts.

I recognise that it is complex. I have a draft Bill here, entitled the children (right to know genetic history) Bill 2012. I drafted that Private Members' Bill, which covered such items as the licensing of fertility services, registration of donor information, right to information on genetic parentage, genetic siblings, request for information as to intended intimate partner or spouse, and a limit on the number of offspring. That Bill also dealt with importation and the retrospective effect of the Act. I subsequently examined the possibility of having a gene library. Part of what they have done in Britain includes a DNA database and we should also look at that. Records should be safeguarded and there should be severe penalties for not handing over intact recordings to the central authority. That should be part of what we do.

I decided not to proceed with the Bill having consulted with Dr. Joanna Rose, to whom I have referred before. She has a lot of expertise in this area. When we went through the individual sections of that Bill, we were uncomfortable as to where it would go because it is very complex.

As regards the right to information on genetic history, it is worth pointing out that we had included an age limit of 16 years, rather than 18 years which is in the Bill before us. We were looking at offspring being notified in writing at the age of 16 years. We referred to the obligation on the State and on parents in that regard.

It is a complex area and one in which I have taken an interest for a long number of years. I was prompted to draft that Bill because I chaired a well-attended meeting in Dublin at which Dr. Joanna Rose spoke. It was the first time I met her and I was taken with her own personal story. She has an estimated 200 to 300 siblings, but I do not think it is right or fair to put any child in that position.

The Minister, and others in the Chamber, will be familiar with the case in England in recent years where a young man and young girl got married, but subsequently discovered that they were half-siblings. That is the risk we run in not regulating this area properly and that is why I have tabled this amendment. In this Bill, I had set the limit at five, but when I came to tabling the amendment I put it at three. I am open as to what the number should be, but there definitely should be a limit.

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.