Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I rise with extremely good news. In the past three and a half years, while I have been here, I have regularly spoken about the families who have been created through surrogacy, children born by surrogacy and the future children to be born by surrogacy. I am pleased that the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly, has brought the legislative amendments to the Health (Assisted Human Reproduction) Bill to the Cabinet today and I have every expectation that they will be approved because they have already been through quite a process.

It is important that I pay tribute to the members of Irish Families Through Surrogacy, who are in the Gallery this morning. They are Ciara Merrigan, chair, Cathy Wheatley, spokesperson, Sara Byrne, public relations officer, and Andrei Balcanasu. I also remember Lisa Cahill who was unable to make it this morning. We look forward to receiving a briefing from the Department of Health later and finding out exactly what this looks like. We already know, however, that the recommendations of the Joint Committee on International Surrogacy were that there be a pre-conception process that safeguards the rights and needs of the surrogate and the rights of the children to their identities, process and natural lifelong relationship with both of their parents. The legislative amendments will also provide a retrospective provision for those of us who already have children via surrogacy and to ensure the recognition of the second parent. Currently under Irish law, only the biological father has the opportunity to have his lifelong legal relationship safeguarded and the second parent, be it a mother or second dad, has no means by which to get that security.

It is important to note that many people have gone through a lot of losses by the time they take the surrogacy journey. They do so looking forward to holding their baby, safeguarding everything about that baby, cherishing that baby in the way they want to and honouring everyone in the process. We hear about the odd outlier cases in the surrogacy journey in which the surrogate's rights are not upheld. No one enters surrogacy with a view to doing anything other than respecting and cherishing the surrogate for our child for all our lives. The first thing I do on my child's birthday is to think of the surrogate and honour her and the extraordinary position she has put us in as a family. A lot of campaigning has been done by Irish Families Through Surrogacy and Irish Gay Dads. They have worked tirelessly to bring us to today. We still have a process to follow. The amendments are due to be discussed in the health committee in January and the process will begin. I am awaiting the thumbs up from the Taoiseach's office, as soon as a decision is made at Cabinet. I especially congratulate the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, and the Ministers, Deputies McEntee and O'Gorman, but Deputy Donnelly headed this up in the past year and worked with his officials, so I congratulate him on all the hard work.