Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Ideally for two parents. Everything we are doing is supposed to be in the best interests of the child. If we are acting in the best interests of the child, we will do our best to give him or her a mother and a father. That is in his or her best interests. I am not saying that is always practicable, but it is in the best interests of the child. It is not right to say biology does not matter. We all know about the joy and fun around likeness, image and comparing who one's son or daughter resembles. It includes shared habits, interests and throwbacks to previous generations. We are now robbing children of this. In my family I have not had that joy because I adopted my children. However, I have had it in my birth family, as well as my broader family. I fully accept that it would have been in the best interests of the children I adopted to have been raised by their birth parents. Adoption comes into the picture only when this is not possible. We are now deliberately creating the family through donation, but let us do so in the best interests of the child by preparing a stand-alone Bill. It is outrageous that we have lumped all of this in with the other areas I mentioned.

Senator Jim Walsh spoke about a young woman who had been reared by a same-sex couple. Her mother decided to be a lesbian when the child was at the age of two or three years and then the father left. She became a strong advocate of gay rights, but now that she has her own children she feels she was denied her father. The father obviously moved out of the household and disappeared, but the relationship did not facilitate her having a mother and a father.