Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will try to speak quickly and leave as much time as I can and hopefully I will not leave anything out of my own speech.

Georgina Roberts was one of our witnesses at the committee and was herself born through surrogacy. She said that the best way to make children secure in their identity as surrogate born people is to make their parents secure in their identity as parents. That really throws it down to us in this House to provide that certainty and security. Members will have heard many people saying today that there is a sense of urgency because there is still that uncertainty and there is still a great insecurity. That really puts a responsibility on us to provide that security. It is great that we are having this debate now in order to keep driving this issue forward. We can keep feet to the fire and keep the pressure on the Minister, the Attorney General, the drafter, or on whoever it needs to be to get this done as quickly as possible.

Like others, I thank the Chair who herded the cats, got us all together, kept us going and kept us moving. Throughout the work of the committee, we all sought to protect the rights and welfare of children, surrogates and intending parents. It is very important that the legislation continues to do that going forward as well. We need to be cognisant of the role of the courts in protecting everyday citizens' rights in all circumstances. The paramountcy principle, which is the idea that the welfare of the child should always be paramount, is a well-established part of family law jurisprudence and should certainly be reflected in this Bill. To enable that, we need to ensure there is proper judicial discretion; that we trust the judges and our courts to protect the rights of children, intending parents and surrogates; that we do not bind their hands or are overly deterministic; and we allow the courts to do the work we give them.

Again, there is an important element here when we are looking at retrospective recognition. Something that is absolutely essential is that we provide the legal recognition for those bonds of love and family relationship that have already been built and are already very real. We need to recognise them and that process needs to be as easy and as straightforward as possible. We need to be looking at what court is appropriate to do that. The District Court is certainly the court with the most judges and the most accessible route. The Circuit Court registrars are certainly a lot more accessible to the average person than those in the High Court. We need to ensure the retrospective route is as seamless and as accessible as possible. We need to look at which court we do that in and it should be as low as possible in terms of our courts.

I am very conscious of time so I will leave it there. There is a great responsibility on us in this House to provide that certainty and security as quickly as possible.

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