Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will add a few words. I thank the Cathaoirleach and welcome him back. I want to emphasise my support for what Senator Keogan said. I again stress that I am concerned that these provisions are happening at all and that we are providing for them at all. Regarding domestic surrogacy, if there were to be no commercial nexus it would at least be easier to try to ensure that. It is debatable as to whether one can fully ensure that there is no commercial nexus and, certainly, it is much harder in the context of international surrogacy. This is a precaution, among other desirable precautions, is that the person who enters into a surrogacy agreement has been habitually and lawfully resident in the State for less than two years.

Senator Seery Kearney spoke of the agency of women who allow themselves to be drawn into providing surrogacy services. It seems to me that this is the best weak defence against the argument that surrogacy exploits the poor. Surrogacy undeniably exploits the poor. As I said earlier, you do not see rich women carrying babies for poor women. This may happen in the most exceptional of circumstances where a rich woman sees herself doing so altruistically. I wonder whether such a person exists when one considers what is involved in getting pregnant, as well as the eventual loss of a child you have nurtured in your womb for nine months. I believe that no woman would willingly choose to do this.

We heard from Senator McDowell about a situation where a person carried a baby because her sibling was unable to have to have a child, so I suppose there are always exceptions. Yet, the reality of surrogacy is that it is the exploitation of the poor by the rich. A woman who provides surrogacy services puts herself through all the emotional, downstream consequences of having been sundered from the child she has nurtured and brought to birth. Indeed, health risks can be associated with carrying a child who is not genetically your own. All those issues are at play here. Senator Seery Kearney speaks sincerely but wrongly in talking up the agency of women who provide surrogacy services.

I do not know if Senator Seery Kearney was already in these Houses when we eventually criminalised the purchaser of sexual services. The same arguments were made over the years. This goes back to when I was first elected in 2007. I was informed by the excellent work being done by Ruhama and other organisations, which state that nobody really freely consents to sell themselves in prostitution because there are invariably situations of abuse, financial disadvantage and sometimes drug addiction, so the person in that situation is in a truly pathetic situation.Therefore, it is not possible to say that they are somehow freely contractual. Of course there are people who advocate for a contractual and transactional approach to this and say a person is entitled to sell their body, but we do not allow that as a matter of public policy in this country any more. One of the reasons is that we do not truly recognise that there can be free agency as a matter of public policy. There cannot be free agency to sell yourself in that way and therefore it is in no denial of your normal right to engage in free contracts, any more than one could say that there could never be a right to freely sell your own body parts. We all know what we would think of it. These issues are terribly complex. We extol those who freely and voluntarily donate an organ for the sake of another human being, but we condemn, deplore and criminalise any possible financial connection in that regard. It seems to me that the surrogacy situation is exactly in parallel with it, because here you have a person selling something of themselves - their nurturing power, their nurturing self - something that a person should never be asked to sell. I know the Minister will respond that this is not commercial, but as we will show and have shown, it is, inevitably and unavoidably, commercial especially when we get to the international surrogacy situation. This de facto lack of freedom even if not de jure, that is built into the surrogacy contract is reason for this proposed amendment. When you think about it, we already know that people who come to the country are desperately poor and disadvantaged. There can be language and all sorts of other barriers in the way of their flourishing. They are more easily prone to exploitation. We know all about women who are trafficked into the country and what they suffer and undergo. We could say that not nearly enough is being done by the organs of the State to combat human trafficking. That is why we fare so badly in the US Trafficking in Persons Report so frequently. When it comes then to the idea that a person might enter into a surrogacy arrangement as a surrogate mother only having been habitually and lawfully resident in the State for not less than two years, I am not suggesting that people will be procuring illegal entrance into the State for the purposes of surrogacy arrangements but we are talking in this amendment about a person having to be habitually and lawfully resident in the State. In the very unusual and tragic circumstances that we have found ourselves in this country, there are people who are habitually and lawfully resident in the State for a relatively short period, and for at least two years at this point, who remain profoundly vulnerable and where there is a far greater risk of inducement being involved in some way. It is also the case that some of these people are very young and, therefore, by substituting five years for two years, we would be at least seeking to ensure that they would not be quite so young than they would otherwise be when they enter into this contract that is undoubtedly harmful to them over the longer term.