I am delighted to welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Fahey, back to the House, five months to the day that he agreed with me it was important to introduce legislation on assisted human reproduction. In the meantime, however, nothing has happened publicly concerning the Department of Health and Children as regards this issue. Nonetheless, I assure the House that plenty has been happening in the assisted reproduction sector. I am sure the Minister of State saw the reports in yesterday's newspapers which included headlines such as "Legal go-ahead given to fertility programme". The programme referred to will involve the donation of eggs. According to the reports, the programme to procure them will begin this week. A leading senior counsel has advised that this will be both legal and constitutional. I could not disagree with that advice because there is no law governing the field at all.
Five months ago I introduced a Bill to deal with assisted human reproduction. It was a very simple Bill which sought the establishment, by the Minister of Health and Children, of a register of all clinics involved in providing assisted human reproduction. The Bill sought that the techniques being used in the clinics should be named and that personnel should be on a register. It also sought that the results of such techniques should be provided along with the costs incurred for each treatment. When I sought leave to introduce the Bill, I made two specific points. The first was that donors of sperm should not be considered to be the parents of the child. As the Minister of State knows, artificial insemination using donor sperm has been used in this country for nearly ten years. The second point was that surrogacy contracts should be considered null and void because while it is impossible to stop surrogacy, no matter what one's views on it, one has to accept that it can happen. My plea at the time was that such contracts should be considered null and void.
Every Senator who spoke in that debate, from both sides of the House, agreed there was a need for legislation. In his speech five months ago, the Minister of State said, "The Department of Health recognises, however, that the regulatory regime currently in force is general in nature and that scientific developments in this area, or indeed the possible entry of less scrupulous interests into this field, this may call into question the adequacy of those arrangements in the future."
Five months later we have a situation which is even more difficult. All I can do is applaud the clinic which has announced it will become involved in collecting human eggs because it had no reason to tell us. I suppose, however, that we would have found out because advertisements will have to be placed in the newspapers to attract healthy young women to donate their eggs from an altruistic point of view.
There are no legal provisions here for in vitro fertilisation, such as exist in every other country in the western world. Are we going to wait for a serious medical accident or a court case before we take any action? Professor James Clinch, who was head of the Medical Council's ethics committee, put it very well when he said on radio that collecting human eggs does not involve pressing someone's belly button to produce them. It is a complicated technique which requires invasion of the woman's body and taking drugs which can, in certain circumstances, lead to the death of the person. Healthy volunteers – people who are not patients – are being asked to take part in procedures which pose a risk to their own lives. If action is not taken now we will end up with an unfortunate accident.
Every Member of the House said my Bill was needed. I was astonished it was not sent on to Committee Stage because a select committee of the Oireachtas would contain a huge cross-section of opinion and could call expert witnesses. We would have five months' work done by now if the Minister had accepted the need for such a Bill.
I realise the Minister said the Bill was not perfect, which I did not think it was. He said it was inadequate in some ways. I was not in the least offended by that because, while I had the good fortune to have two lawyers to help me draft it, the Minister has a whole Department and legal draftspersons to help him bring forward legislation.
Why is there a delay in addressing this serious situation? I have been contacted by members of the medical profession and people who have been involved in in vitro fertilisation as clients, some of whom succeeded in having a baby. I have been contacted by people who have serious doubts about the ethics of the process. One does not need to be in favour of in vitro fertilisation to want some legislation and regulation. The reason no further effort is being made to do anything about this area, which is crying out for urgent action, is that it is considered a sensitive issue in this country.
