Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As a colleague, I know that if the Minister of State stands here and says he has made the phone calls and gives that reassurance, I know that he has. I am grateful for that. However, there are other concerns here. For example, the position paper approved by the Cabinet talks about application to the High Court for retrospective surrogacies. The regulatory authority would also have to be established. If that is what we are looking at my daughter, who is now almost eight, will be ten or 12 at the rate at which this is operating. Even were the legislation to be in place by the summer, we are still looking at another year before there will be applications to court. People like me, whose documentation has already had judicial oversight on not one but two occasions still have to apply and go to the expense of applying to the High Court. There are things in this, which are not person-centred or child-centred. As there is no sense of urgency, I ask the Minister of State to bring that back. It is my understanding that the Attorney General is sticking strictly by the High Court. I will be objecting to that all of the way through, as being totally unnecessary and cumbersome unless they are going to financially support it. We have already paid out tens of thousands to get in and get the legal orders we already have. It is unacceptable that there are any more delays like that.