Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It was ten years ago last month that I sent my first email to a predecessor of the Minister's asking for a legal framework for surrogacy in Ireland. I begin, therefore, by congratulating the Minister and his team for the exceptional work that has gone into this Bill. I am very grateful to the Department of Health officials - Pamela, Edward, Colm and others - the members of the interdepartmental group, the Ministers for Justice and Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth and, especially, the Minister for Health for his commitment to drive a legal framework to provide oversight and regulation for the fertility treatment of residents in Ireland. I acknowledge the work of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on International Surrogacy, which diligently worked to make recommendations for an ethical framework for surrogacy based on the internationally accepted Verona principles.

I acknowledge those who are in the Gallery. The amazing champion of Irish Families Through Surrogacy, Ms Cathy Wheatley, is here representing that incredible organisation of mammies and daddies who have passionately and selflessly lobbied for this legislation, along with Irish Gay Dads and Equality for Children. I extend a special welcome to Ms Ivanna Holub, herself a surrogate mother. All of them are my fellow travellers and noble advocates and all of them are holding their breaths for this legislation.

I acknowledge in particular those who are here to support me personally - my closest friends and colleagues, my family, my husband David, my daughter's siblings, my stepchildren Ian and Michelle Kearney and, most of all, my parents Pat and Patsy Seery.

I have told my story of playing at being a mother as a child. I never imagined that motherhood would not happen or that my pathway to being a mammy myself could be strewn with tragedy and loss. However, it is not just about me or the other mothers and second dads, those who are already parents and those who dream of being parents. It is not about them. It is also about the ordinary heroes on these journeys like my parents, my daughter's grandparents, Pat and Patsy Seery. They were grandparents through the wonderful science of fertility treatment, grandparents who withheld and masked their own grief while comforting and supporting their only child through the heartache and disappointment as we faced loss after loss and defeat after defeat, who lit candles and cried out to God for the injustice of grief, who travelled abroad for the IVF treatments and eventually, happily, to the birth of our baby, who sat in a hospital anxiously awaiting the birth of their only grandchild, who are completely devoted to her and who, under the laws of this State, have no legal standing in their relationship with her. They are denied legal recognition. That is until now, with this Bill the Minister is bringing through.

We will get into the debate and the provisions and details of the Bill on Committee Stage. However, it needs to be said that this Bill provides for a very wide range of oversight and provisions regulating assisted human reproduction in all of its forms. It is to be welcomed and celebrated. The Bill establishes an assisted human reproduction regulatory authority to license fertility service providers and to research donor assisted human reproduction and surrogacy both nationally and internationally. It also makes provisions for past surrogacy parental orders. It is imperative for the IVF treatment scheme.

When the first test tube baby, Louise Brown, was born in 1978, a whole new frontier of hope and possibility was opened up for couples experiencing infertility. No one I know believes they have a right to a child but everyone, including me, believes that we should have a way of being able to try for a baby to give substance to the inherent human instinct to have one's own child. Science has afforded the otherwise hopeless in that journey the opportunity to try to become parents. The capabilities of science should not be without guidance and oversight. It is right that there are guardrails imposed within which science should operate and that the human dignity of all involved is protected and promoted. This Bill does precisely that.

Surrogacy for women who want to be mothers is not a first choice. In fact, no woman wants to see another woman carry their baby. No woman wants someone else to feel the first flutters of her baby kicking in someone else's body. Our bodies remind us monthly of that yearning and that failure. Any woman who desperately wants to have a baby wants to carry that baby herself. When the constitutional convention voted on marriage equality in 2013, a total of 81 members recommended that the State enact laws incorporating the changed arrangements that necessarily flow from the recognition of marriage equality with regard to parentage, guardianship and the upbringing of children.Apart from adoption and fostering, the only way for a same-sex male couple to have a baby is via surrogacy.

Women volunteer to become surrogates for a whole variety of reasons. I established an online support group for parents and intending parents in 2014 and was surprised by the number of women who contacted me to ask me how to become a surrogate. I had to reply with the stark truth warning about the legal realities in Ireland of becoming a surrogate. I do not deny that there are those who seek to exploit and coerce women into becoming surrogates, nor do I deny that there is a small number of desperate intending parents who do not sufficiently interrogate the human rights of the surrogate, or that an even smaller number do not uphold the right of children to know their origins and biological identity. This Bill addresses those concerns comprehensively, cogently, carefully and conservatively. I looked at the online nameless warriors, the followers who claim Members of this House as their champions and claim to be the voice of surrogates, while viciously and disgustingly discussing the families, children and motivations of those of us who advocate. They spout lies, misrepresentations and bigotry, pushing an agenda of discrimination, stigma and hate.

This Government made a policy decision to ban commercial surrogacy both domestically and internationally. While I understand that policy decision and the need to avoid any implicit associated moral hazard, it needs to be said that it is wrong to characterise all surrogacies with a commercial element as being unethical. It is wrong to create an inference that any birth involving a payment to a surrogate was, by default, exploitative. It is wrong to permit even the slightest stigma to attach to the children born from such arrangements or their parents. It is wrong to presume that such surrogates were totally without agency.

We must acknowledge that the policy decision, which I support, is very likely to cause disproportionate hardship to same-sex male couples, who have much narrower choices of where to go to be supported in having a family together. While I am optimistic that surrogacy in Ireland will open up for them and that ethical choices will still remain, there is fear, legitimate hurt and anger among our LGBT brothers at the disproportionate impact of that decision on them.

The legislation provides a legal avenue for the recognition of parental relationships between parents and their children by creating a three-year window in which existing families whose children are denied the life-long parental standing and legal relationship with both of their parents can apply to the High Court for parental orders. There will be significant anxiety until the first of those parents walk out on the steps of the High Court with their parental orders in their hands. Families already have had gruelling and financially costly experiences in getting parental recognition for the biological fathers of their children. When applying for guardianship and custody, many of us have been to court on two separate occasions, trying to ensure that our children have all the parental protections they deserve and that they have equality. At that last moment, we have had the experience of the Chief State Solicitor's Office changing the rules based on its own changing interpretations at the last minute, without legislation and without explanation.

I welcome the Minister's clarifications. He could not be clearer and more direct today in ensuring that his policy intent and the supplemental provisions will give no one a right to veto a parental order application against the best interests of a child and that the criteria for past surrogacy applicants will not be so onerous that only a few will be able to meet them.

I pay tribute to Selina Bonnie, the amazing reproductive rights advocate who died earlier this year. I want to be sure, in her name, that no one with a disability is excluded from accessing fertility treatment. I also wish to acknowledge those who feel left behind for now in this legislation. We will continue the battle and hope that the supplementary Bill in September will address their concerns. They are the same-sex female couples whose children remain excluded from parental recognition for both of their parents. The cervical cancer survivors from the 221+ group, many of whom have experienced relationship breakdown from the strain of their misdiagnosis and subsequent dramatic surgeries and treatment, need donor-assisted surrogacy to have a child but are unable to qualify under the criteria set out because, alone, they cannot provide a biological link for their much longed-for child.

I sat through every minute of the legislation as it made its way through the Dáil. There was not a vote because all sides of the House agreed that it is urgently needed and it is comprehensive in its provisions. Much will be said in this House about it being too liberal, while the concern of the Lower House was that it is not liberal enough. I also note that there were previous reports and pre-legislative scrutiny. This has gone on for at least eight years, with scrutiny and public opportunity to input into this.

I want to end with a short verse written to a surrogacy-born child that I came across in my journey. In reading it, I pay tribute to the wonderful women and the men, but particularly the women who have endured terrible sorrow and loss on their way to that precious moment of holding their babies.

Not flesh of my flesh

Nor bone of my bone

but very remarkably all of my own.

I will never forget for a single minute

You were not born under my heart

but in it.