Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There is a smoke-and-mirrors casting of the situation, as it is proposed in the Bill, going on. For future surrogacies, we will have a regulatory authority that will look at all of the circumstances and get increasingly better as it moves on through the years, which is what I used to think and say about it. The more experience that regulatory authority gets, the better it will get at adjudicating, spotting and knowing where people should not go, because intending parents need to minded.

We will have a regulatory authority. First, let us deal with the domestic side. It will license clinics in Ireland and adjudicate on any planned surrogacy before it commences. A clinic that breaches any of the AHRRA’s conditions will likely lose its licence and be prosecuted. There are all those safeguards, which Senator Mullen conveniently pretends not to see because he wants to see a dark picture instead of this ethical framework. That is the first miscalculation or convenient ignorance of what is in the Bill that is being exposed.

The second is that domestic surrogacy does not occur in Ireland to the extent that it may in the future because there was no way of severing the rights and obligations of the surrogate mother who does not want to have lifelong obligations to a child, does not want a child to have inheritance rights on her family and does not want all of those obligations. Senator McDowell was instructed for the State of those very circumstances. Because of the failure to legislate until now, we have not seen what can happen in domestic surrogacy. It is my hope that we will be able to have domestic surrogacy, particularly for the LGBTQ community in Ireland, and that there will be opportunities that will open up for them to grow their family at home. Nobody wants to give birth away from home or be at their child’s birth a long way from home. I have family here who flew out to be with me. You are a long way from home and you thought you would never come through Dublin Airport. Nobody actually wants to have to travel abroad. It would have been much better if there was a framework in Ireland.

I spoke to people last week about setting up a support group for parents. I was surprised by the number of people who contacted me asking how to become a surrogate. They were not poor. They were doing it out of altruism. They liked being pregnant. There was a whole heap of reasons that a woman knows someone with a fertility issue and was perhaps sussing out the situations and whether she could sit down with the couple and say, “I have had successful pregnancies. I could probably carry a baby for you.” However, I had to tell them how hazardous it is and what would happen if they did it in Ireland. There is no framework here for domestic surrogacy.

The characterisation is absolutely disgusting, to say the least, as well as the terminology. Those in the Gallery were right to respond. They sat through quite appalling and provocative comments here today, and they have done so quietly. Naturally, they were aghast at the characterisation of them and the women who carried their babies.

Ireland will be very progressive and thorough. Last week, I said that this is cogent and comprehensive legislation. It is also conservative. Denmark just announced it will legislate for surrogacy. The Mennesson case – we met that family at Easter – in France paved a way. The idea that this is being done in no other country except Greece is patently untrue. There is a pathway to parenthood through surrogacy in other countries, so that is patently untrue.

I wish to address another matter. There were two women on the webinar with Senator Mullen yesterday, and there were other speakers on it, who, on social media, are anti-trans and anti-gay men being parents. They are vile in what they have to say and in their commentary. They also think that I should not have a voice in this debate because nobody who is vested in the outcome should. I have news for you. The budget affects everybody in this House as well as everybody else.