Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is very welcome and I thank him for taking this matter. I got an email of apology from the Department of Health regarding this, as it is a very important matter. I have no doubt the Minister of State will deal with it very properly. Last year in March the Health (Assisted Human Reproduction) Bill 2022 commenced in the Dáil. It passed Second Stage and moved on to Committee Stage. It was paused on Committee Stage to afford the Committee on International Surrogacy an opportunity to sit and make recommendations to Government. That committee did so and made a presentation to Government of the report on 6 July, and the Acting Chairperson was part of that. On 17 December the Minister for Health was very much appreciated and applauded for bringing to Cabinet a policy paper that pretty much took on board all the recommendations of the committee on how we might legislate for children who are currently living with a legal relationship with only one parent because there is no legal mechanism for the second parent to become their legal, lifelong parent and also for future children born via surrogacy.

Surrogacy is a fact of infertility. It is a treatment for infertility. The people who avail of it, where they are women, are unable to carry a pregnancy because of very serious infertility issues, have experienced serial miscarriages and include cancer survivors. The 221+ Group need to avail of surrogacy for instance, as do people with cystic fibrosis who have had fairly catastrophic treatments. There are also same-sex couples. Male same-sex couples naturally need surrogacy in order to advance their family and do so very successfully. However, under the current regime, the biological father is the only person who may have a legal, lifelong relationship with that child in future and with children already born. Everybody here wants safe, ethical surrogacy. Everybody here wants to be able to look their child in the eye and say that everybody involved in this process has been honoured and respected and that this is who you are, this where you came from and this is your story. I have an eight year-old and she knows everything about her life and about how it came to the point that I am not her legal mother but my husband is her legal father. Everybody in this situation wants their surrogate protected, and future surrogates protected, from any possibility of exploitation.

I have no doubt there is a sentence in the Minister of State's speech that says this is very complex law, because that is what gets said back to me all the time. I have no doubt about that. I appreciate an awful lot of work went into drafting the legislation this year and I acknowledge the amendments are nearly there, but there is huge concern that here we are nearly a year later and coming up to the 17 December. We need to see the amendments. I have been afforded a meeting with the Attorney General. In extraordinary circumstances I was awarded a meeting with him and a senior official in the Department of Health. I know the amendments were coming, but I also know they were delayed because the senior drafter was drafting housing legislation. That is really needed, but what is pretty shocking is we are the Government and we only have one senior legislative drafter. One would have imagined the Government of the country could command greater resources than that, but am I not naive for having thought so? There cannot be any more delays. There are parents who live in fear the biological father will die and the child will have no legal parent in this country. There are families where that relationship has broken down, but the second parent is staying in an abusive relationship with a power imbalance because they have no recourse to the courts. We need a timeline and we need it urgently.