Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There was an awful lot there. Individuals who are born without gender-specific characteristics, such as a uterus, know from a relatively young age that they do not have a uterus. A girl will probably find that out by her 14th birthday. I acknowledge that when this was raised last week, the Minister said it would be under review. I think he gave a little bit of latitude that at the three-year review, he is going to do that. However, at 21 it would be well established, for a woman in particular. Probably by time she reaches 21, she will have had an awful lot of surgeries. For quite a number of the couples I know, that is the situation that has arisen. From that perspective, the age of 21 is most certainly appropriate.

What the Senator appears to be suggesting is that the criteria should be narrowed to exclude men. We are back to the previous argument, which is a contention that men should not parent children on their own. I object to that. I think it is fundamentally wrong and fundamentally flawed in its thinking. The suggestion is about putting in a prohibition here to the effect that a single male at 21 is not going to be mature enough and is not going to be allowed. I would like to see the public reaction if we put that into legislation. I would be very confident that we most certainly would not ever do any such thing.

The Senator also uses terms like children being sundered from their parents, from their mothers. He raises the issue of motherhood and suggests that motherhood is being undermined here. We are living in a society where science has afforded the opportunity for people with fertility issues to advance and to have children. In fact, we have been living in that society since 1978. There is some optimal motherhood standard that is being put out here that is incorrect and does not exist. Last week, there was talk in this House about denying a child breastfeeding, for instance. There are two angles on that one. First, not every woman who gives birth naturally, without all the intervention of fertility treatment, actually is able to breastfeed or wants to breastfeed.While breastfeeding is laudable and to be encouraged, there should not be an apartheid with people either in or out. We go to great lengths to try to support breastfeeding. While we are on this subject, I note that a recent winner of breastfeeder of the year was a mother via surrogacy. Mothers of surrogate-born children can induce breastmilk to feed their children. A number of women on a surrogacy journey attempted to do that, myself included, but I stopped because it fed into the idea of having to attain a perfect standard of motherhood. If you cannot give birth yourself, then you cannot obtain that perfect standard of motherhood, so I rejected the idea. We did a great deal of counselling and had many discussions for years before we ever made the choice. This standard of motherhood is on the same page as denying that surrogates can make choices about their own bodies.

The idea that there are all these misled and exploited poor women is not true. In the tiny minority of cases where it might be true, there are safeguards in the legislation and the clinic, country and standards will not be approved. What is happening in that country and in the proposed avenue will be examined, although I appreciate that this is domestic legislation. The idea is not true, yet it is being repeated time and again.

Another idea being put about is that the Government and intending parents via surrogacy are deliberately depriving children of their genetic histories. Children of intending parents can be the full genetic children of those parents. They are all of those things. In the other category of intending parents, one of the parents will be genetically related to the child. Here is another interesting fact, though. Ormond Quay Paternity Services is the organisation that provides genetic testing. All of us who have been down this road have paid it thousands of euro to expedite our genetic testing to ensure that we can bring our children home and our children are entitled to citizenship. We have waited for the email confirming that the intending fathers are 99.99% the biological fathers of our children. Ormond Quay Paternity Services also provide DNA testing for the courts. We have to go to that organisation because it is the service provider for the courts and any report it produces is an acknowledged report. According to its annual report, 33% of the men in relationships with women who have given birth to children are not the fathers of those children. Out there in the public sphere of people who do not need surrogacy to have families, there are people rearing children who are not their biological children. I put this to the Minister a long time ago in a submission. We have a particular category of case before the courts where people are contesting paternity or claiming it, but one in three of those fathers is not the father of the child he believed was his. If we follow this logic through and apply the same standards as obtain for a couple who can give birth, are we going to start genetic testing at the Coombe hospital? Everyone is to be suspicious because we want to make sure-----