Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The purpose of amendment No. 8 is to raise the minimum age of a donor to 21 years. It appears to be to match the minimum age of intending parents. However, the basis for setting different ages is not arbitrary. The age of 18 is set for a prospective donor on the grounds that he or she is of full age and has the capacity to consent both to any necessary medical treatment and to give full legal consent in relation to assignment of parentage. That said, I am advised by key stakeholders that it takes up to a year or more to recruit suitable donors given the clinical requirements for medical screening and counselling, and in the case of women the medical interventions required. For the most part, donors will be somewhat older than the minimum age established but I do not think it is necessary or appropriate to set a higher minimum age. By contrast, the age of 21 is set as a minimum for intending parents on the basis that the Department of Health advises it takes three years to arrive at a diagnosis of infertility, although I accept the points made by Senator Crown on, for example, some of the patients he has treated where it would have been obvious from a much earlier age that a person would be infertile. Thus, if an adult is seeking to become a parent at the earliest stage of adulthood, it will take at least three years to have a diagnosis of infertility which would indicate donor-assisted human reproduction. It is for that reason, not on the basis of presuming a greater level of physical or emotional maturity that 21 is set as the minimum age for intending parents. I cannot accept the amendment.