Catherine Ardagh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This is probably one of the biggest Bills that I have ever seen come into this House. I thank the Minister and his Department for putting significant work into this Bill, for getting it passed in the Dáil and placing it before us today.

In 2020, Senator Fiona O'Loughlin and I tabled a Commencement matter on publicly funded IVF at the time the Seanad held its meetings in the Dáil Chamber. It is something we have been passionate about and working on since then, along with academics, and clinicians such as Professor Mary Wingfield who helped us with our Bill. To get to today is truly remarkable and I thank the Minister for that. Publicly funded IVF is happening without this legislation. There is no waiting. We have fertility hubs around the country, and I understand there will be a stand-alone IVF centre in Cork. All this is hugely welcome.

I thank my colleague Senator Mary Seery Kearney who, as she said, has championed this cause since 2014. For more than a decade she has sought for surrogacy to be regulated on an ethical basis in this country. Yet all I have seen today, from the far right, is Members coming in here to jump up and down, while licking their lips, at the thought of clickbait on Twitter later on. That is all they are doing.