Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I refer to her extraordinarily brave representations. Her contributions to the debate were very personal. People can be left feeling vulnerable when they expose themselves in that way. I acknowledge the Senator's contributions. I also acknowledge Senators Catherine Ardagh and Fiona O’Loughlin, who have been pushing on this, and pushed very hard on IVF to get that through as well.

There are further issues, which are being addressed in a forthcoming Bill. This Bill is massively important but we have further work to do. There are specific issues that different parents, intending parents and different groups have raised. We have done everything we can to amend this Bill to accommodate as many of those as we can. We made significant changes on Committee Stage and Report Stage in the Dáil to facilitate those, but there is further to go.

I will quickly go through some of these changes. The first is in respect of international donor assisted human reproduction. The plan is to facilitate the use of clinics abroad once they meet the required criteria of our regulatory authorities. This will be most relevant, but not exclusively so, for same-sex female couples. The Bill, as originally drafted, did not provide the same rights. Let us say, for example, an Irish couple is using fertility services in Dublin or Paris. Those availing of the facilities in Paris did not have the same access to parental orders as those here. I was not willing to stand over that, so we are amending that in the upcoming legislation.

I spoke briefly about the following issue, which Senator O’Hara also raised. The children of Irish citizens living abroad availing of assisted human reproduction or surrogacy have absolute rights to Irish citizenship, Irish passports and everything that pertains to an Irish citizen. It is a legally complex area. The initial legal view that the Minister, Deputy McEntee, and I got was that this would not be possible. We were not willing to accept that. Our officials, to their great credit, have engaged over a long period to find a legal route to this, and we will have it covered in the amending legislation.

We will be dispensing with the requirement for the consent of the parent or surrogate in retrospective applications of a parental order in exceptional circumstances. I am not sure we got to these amendments. Senator Seery Kearney tabled them. As I said previously, as far as I am concerned, the discretion of the courts is already provided for in this Bill. That is absolutely the policy intent, but we will make it explicit as well as implicit in the upcoming amending Bill.

In the past hour, we have been discussing the use of already created embryos where the donor has since died. That will be fully covered in the amending Bill.

With regard to fertility preservation for children undergoing treatment or who have a particular condition, we will ensure that includes both a condition or treatment, to be as inclusive as possible.

We will provide the courts with explicit discretion with regard to the residency requirements of the surrogate in retrospective surrogacy applications for parental orders. Again, this is already implicit and the policy intent is clear, but we need to make it explicit. If it is not possible to prove that the surrogate in a retrospective case was resident in the relevant jurisdiction for 12 months, the courts will have discretion to grant the order anyway.

There will also be further consideration of the interim period in regard to surrogacy. This is the period between the commencement of the relevant sections of the Bill and the establishment of the regulatory authority. We are working with the Courts Service in order that the High Court can hear these first cases. I cannot wait to see the first parents coming out onto the steps of the High Court with their parental order in hand. I am really looking forward to that. We are in the hands of the Courts Service to some extent. We are working with it to see how quickly it can facilitate that.

There will be an interim period essentially between commencing the Bill, which will be before the courts can take the first hearings, and establishing the regulatory authority. We are accelerating the establishment of the regulatory authority. I have already sanctioned the hiring of a project management team to get everything ready. I want that interim period to be as short as possible. My hope is that we can narrow it down to just a few months. I have asked my officials to do everything they can to have the regulatory authority up and running by the end of this year. Let us say it will be up and running in January and the Courts Service is able to hear the first cases in September or October, or as soon as possible at any rate. The interim period would be the time between those two dates and further consideration will be given to that in the upcoming Bill.

Where do we go from here? The Bill will now go to the President, and I hope he will sign it. We will continue with establishing the regulatory authority and working with the Courts Service. Critically, our aim is to have the amending legislation back before the Dáil the moment it reconvenes after the summer.

To all of the children of Ireland born of surrogacy, this is your day. To your mums and dads, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, grannies and grandads, this is your day. To those who are using or will use assisted human reproduction in the future, be it IVF, surrogacy or other supports, this Bill makes it increasingly likely that a day in the future will be your wonderful, joyous day too.