Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I would also like to say “Up the Rossies” considering that I live only about five miles from the Roscommon border. I am as frequently in Roscommon as I am in County Galway. Fáilte romhaibh agus go n-éirí go geal libh. They are listening to the robust expression of our democracy, or what is our noisy democracy at times, but it is better to have a noisy democracy than a democracy in which people are silenced because of groupthink. That is why we sometimes have to disagree, hopefully never too disagreeably, in this Chamber. Sometimes we have to disagree about important things, and we are certainly doing that here today.

One of the features of my life in recent times is my being approached by women and men who may not share my views on other important issues, including the right to life itself, but who do see the injustices of much of the other things the Government has been proposing in recent times, including the arrangements around surrogacy. Only recently, after I had had my hair cut, a woman in the same salon asked me whether I was a politician.I said I was and asked if I was in trouble. She said I was not in trouble and wished to say she admired my stance on the referendum, that she voted no in both referenda as well. She told me we were not always bedfellows. I felt like saying to her since we are in bed together now, we might have some pillow talk about some of those issues on which we disagreed in the past. That is my experience, although I obviously did not say that. There are people who agree and disagree on different issues of importance but there are many women who are profoundly offended by this legislation because they see it as an attack, not just on womanhood, but on motherhood, not to mention the abuses of the child's rights in the situation.

Senator Seery Kearney made two points which deserve and merit a response. The first point concerns the not-to-worry thinking that there is really no reason to fear we are going into a dark place because there will be licensing of all of these providers by the new body which is being set up, namely, the Assisted Human Reproduction Regulatory Authority, AHRRA. How can one have confidence it will not be as captured by the surrogacy industry as the Minister and the Government have been? Time after time, we see the concept of regulation and the establishment of regulatory authorities are really just other words to describe how we permit this in a way that does not frighten the horses. People will have no confidence these licensing clinics will not be entirely facilitative rather than restrictive. I go further than that; as far as international surrogacy arrangements are concerned, there is simply no way this can be policed remotely from Ireland. That is another reason this should be confined to EU citizens, if it is to be done at all. The further you get away from this jurisdiction, the harder it will be to have any control on what is happening, no matter what the rules say. The Minister, Senator Seery Kearney and everyone knows it but it does not suit them to admit it. That is why, in many of the instances under discussion here, it makes no sense to talk about safeguards and what they might deliver. The international situation will indeed be a dark picture.

Senator Seery Kearney made another point which I thought was interesting. She said looks forward to the day when there will be more widespread domestic surrogacy. She did not go as far as to say I think - although maybe she did on the record - that she looks forward to the day when it is not necessary to engage in international surrogacy arrangements. She made an interesting point when she mentioned that one of the reasons people in our jurisdiction do not make themselves available as surrogate mothers is because they do not want or would not want to have any responsibilities towards the child financially, by way of inheritance or otherwise. Does that not really show what an unnatural thing we are talking about? We want to bring forward an arrangement and make this available in such a way which would enable the carrying of a child in the womb by that child's mother for nine months, who will give birth to that child after exchanging some genetic information or influence through epigenetics, after the nurturing and the bonding and a lot of other stuff we know about and indeed we do not know about, and for that mother not to have any obligations to the child. That goes to the heart of what is wrong about all of this.

I wish to make a point on which I agree with Senator Seery Kearney. To quote The Saw Doctors, it is not today or yesterday that she and I have disagreed on this issue. I remember the first day we disagreed on this; it was to do with an entirely different matter which was being debated on the floor of this House. I mentioned my belief that a child should not be sundered from his or her birth mother, that a child should be brought up by a father and a mother and, as far as possible, by their own father and mother and that this should be considered socially desirable, always encouraged and never deliberately prevented, as is what is happening in this case. I made comments in this regard but I may not have made them in any great detail. I remember the newly elected Senator Seery Kearney taking me to task immediately after the debate. At the time, I was unaware of the Senator's personal story. She did so in her admirable but very forceful way. I just about fended off the verbal onslaught, as I recall. Why do I recall that? The Senator mentioned there are people online who suggest she should not have a voice. I disagree with them if they suggest she should not be part of the-----