Shane Coleman: … Some European countries, Germany, Sweden, France, I think as well, ban surrogacy, completely. Would you be of a mind to do that?
Minister Varadkar: I’ve heard that. I haven’t actually checked that up yet as to whether they ban it outright. They certainly may ban commercial surrogacy and I would be very much opposed to commercial surrogacy, you know which is surrogacy for money. What I would not be opposed to is the idea that perhaps somebody’s sister carries… I think that’s entirely reasonable quite frankly.
Shane Coleman Because the Iona Institute released a statement on Friday and they said and I’m paraphrasing here but, essentially, what they said is that a child should never be the subject of a contract, even if that contract is a non-commercial one, they said. You would disagree with that.
Minister Varadkar: ‘Look at’, when is a child ever subject to a contract? People have kids all the time and they have them in all sorts of ways and it’s not about contracts. I think the first thing must always be the best interests of the child. That must be the overriding principle in any legislation we do. But, look at, you know, there’s two ways you can approach these things, like, I’ve read up on this in the last couple of months and where technology is now, it’s just extraordinary, the things that can be done, scientifically now, are even way beyond anything that I thought could be done. You know you can actually have three genetic parents now. I didn’t believe that but you actually can and you can either take the view that we’re going to pretend that technology doesn’t exist and that people don’t travel and people don’t do things anyway and live like the Amish and make it all go away or you can accept the fact that we live in a different world now and try and legislate ar ound that and try and regulate for it, legislate against the things that are bad and regulate for the things that we think are acceptable
Shane Coleman: Just, lastly on this, Frank Clarke , the one judge who dissented in the Supreme Court — I think it was six to one — he spoke of a ‘least bad solution’ for both birth and genetic mother to be registered. Is that something that the Government might consider? It seems like, as he described it, a ‘least bad solution’, doesn’t it?
Minister Varadkar: Well, no, it happens at the moment, which I think people find very difficult is that, where surogacy occurs, a lot of people, of course, travel, go overseas for surrogacy, is that essentially parents have to adopt their own child. So you know, they are the genetic father or genetic mother of this child — a surrogate carried the child for them — and then they have to adopt their own child and some of them find that offensive, quite frankly, and what we would propose to do, not in my legislation — now this would be in different legislation that Frances Fitzgerald is doing — is to allow for the transfer of parentage using a different legal mechanism to adoption. In many ways, it is much the same thing but, I think, emotionally, it’s different for people, because they don’t like the idea of having to adopt their own flesh and blood.