Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That is not a view to which I subscribe. All combinations of people, whether two women, two men, a man and a woman, one woman or one man, can be, and regularly are, fantastic parents. For all the reasons we have discussed, that is, of course, being legislated for in the Bill. We are setting out the pathway for single parents.

One of the questions asked was what happens if the intending parents end up not applying for a parental order. Senator Seery Kearney has brilliantly demonstrated how unlikely that is, given everything a parent or parents must go through to get to that point.We have to remember this is a last resort for people. They have tried themselves; it has not worked. They will have gone through assisted human reproduction and it will not have worked. They will have spent a fortune. As the Senator said, they will have mortgaged their future in many cases. There is nothing they want more in the world than to be parents and to have this child. The idea that having got there, after years of a really difficult journey, they would then say-----