Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I applaud the work of the two Senators who have brought this matter forward. I commend their sincerity and praise Senator Ardagh for how well she has spoken publicly about her personal journey. An IVF journey is, for anybody, an emotional roller-coaster and very difficult. Many people spend their entire financial future – myself included – on the hope of a child. It is worth every cent but financial security is mortgaged for the hope of holding that baby. I know that from my journey of 13 IVFs, five miscarriages and two surrogacies, the ultimate one resulting in the birth of my fantastic daughter.

IVF funding is desperately and urgently needed. I note the Minister’s statements from last year as the surrogacy committee was sitting to the effect that the AHR Bill was being stalled waiting for the outcome. I went back over statements in this House and elsewhere which indicated that there was a precondition of the AHR Bill being in place before IVF funding could be facilitated. Professor Mary Wingfield, at a meeting of the joint committee on 14 April 2022, spoke of the fact that funding of IVF is not in the AHR Bill and that the regulatory authority was not being prescribed oversight mechanisms for IVF funding. That is a peculiarity. I wonder why not. It should have been at the centre of the AHR Bill. That is the appropriate place for it. That is not to take from today’s Bill, but it would have been the appropriate place for it. I raised that in June of last year.

I had previously raised the need for criteria. People like Selina Bonnie are part of the reproductive justice group and will be here in the audiovisual room on 3 May at 12 noon. I ask all to attend that. They will talk about the discrimination in access to fertility for women with disabilities and disabled women.Her particular story is horrific. Before she was offered IVF treatment, or any fertility treatment, she was asked to give a guarantee that her child would not be disabled. I have raised this matter with the Minister and to be fair he was horrified when he heard it last year, and I have raised this matter with him many times since and at every opportunity.

IVF funding has been in place in this State for a good number of years but in very limited circumstances. If a woman has cancer, her eggs can be frozen and, indeed, the same applies to men so sperm are frozen. In fact, ICSI treatments and IVF are provided. Professor Wingfield gave testimony to that when she participated in meetings of the Joint Committee on International Surrogacy. Facilities even go as far as to ship embryos to clinics in countries in cases where women who have had hysterectomies, as part of their cancer treatment, are unable to carry their own babies and, consequently, need to avail of surrogacy. Professor Wingfield emphasised that IVF funding is already provided so we did not need legislation just to extend it. However, I appreciate that we need to have a formality when it comes to criteria and thus ensuring an inclusive, fair and equitable criteria when it comes to accessing IVF. We must also ensure we have a fair situation when it comes to the treatment of people with fertility issues. It is an anomaly that families are supported to ship embryos abroad for surrogacy and yet the women who require assistance because of their cancer treatment are denied parenthood in this State.

I am a little bit perplexed because last Friday, I received a statement from the office of the Minister for Health and I wonder where AHR is in the legislation. We have heard through the grapevine that certain criteria will be excluded from the legislation and that prospective surrogacy and retrospective surrogacy will be thrown into the one pot instead of retrospective surrogacy being treated separately legislatively and having easy access to the courts. We have been told that the green list is extremely narrow and is so restrictive as to be prohibition of surrogacy by stealth and I hope that it is not the case.

Last December, the Minister gave me an excellent briefing on surrogacy. At that time he advised me that people were working through their weekends in order to make sure that the legislation would arrive on time and be done in a timely manner. I am a little bit perplexed that last Friday at 5.50 p.m. I received a note which states the process of drafting new provisions is being undertaken in tandem with the drafting and finalisation of substantially proposed consequential and other amendments to the 11 Parts and 134 pages of the published Bill. So if we needed legislation to be rushed through last year, and the legislation could not be delayed indefinitely for surrogacy, yet now we are drafting a whole heap of other amendments, I wonder what the legislative draftspersons were doing last year. Clearly, they were not doing things like this that are absolutely necessary and required.

On the restrictive interpretation of elements of the surrogacy report compiled by the Joint Committee on International Surrogacy, I note that to date, there has been absolutely no engagement with any member of the committee, including myself. That is an absolute disgrace.

I hope that we are going to see AHR included. The only hope that I have concerning a timed amendment is that given that it is down to seven months, that it means the AHR will be delivered and in place by that time and that any preconditions are there. I say that because I absolutely support this Bill and laud these experiences. However, tomorrow a couple will walk again into the High Court where he has a terminal illness and that child is going to be left without a parent in this State. This weekend, mothers and second fathers around the country will not have access to see their own child because of a failure. Also, on numerous occasions a High Court judge has repeatedly mentioned that the State has failed to legislate for parenthood. He does so not because he is ignorant of the separation of powers but because counsel for the State keep informing the court that legislation is imminent when in actual fact, if I am to believe all that I have heard on the grapevine because nobody has bothered to brief me directly, then we could be years away from actual parental applications to the court and in the most expensive court in the land, which is a disgrace. However, I commend the Bill and thank the Leas-Chathaoirleach for his indulgence.