Sir, – Two reports in The Irish Times of November 16th are reminders of how political events impact on the world outside politics and have real consequences for many people. They also relate to issues of major personal concern that for me have been a cause of deep frustration.
Harry McGee, writing about the newly published Gambling Bill, reports that six successive ministers over 15 years progressed the Bill but never got it over the line. He rightly depicts gambling in Ireland as like the lawless frontier of the Wild West. On July 15th, 2013, I published the General Scheme of the Gambling Control Bill 2013, a draft Bill which was subject to hearings before the Joint Oireachtas Justice Committee that autumn and on which the Department of Justice sought and received submissions. Upon completion of the consultative process, I expected with the co-operation of the attorney general’s office to publish a final version of the Bill by the summer or early autumn of 2014 and intended that it be enacted by the Houses of the Oireachtas by the end of that year.
In January 2014, I published the general scheme of the Children and Family Relationships Bill, the initial version of which I had personally drafted. Among the Bill’s many sections was included provision for both domestic surrogacy and the recognition of international surrogacies based on a comparative analysis of international surrogacy laws. In February 2014, the Supreme Court, when hearing an appeal relating to surrogacy and the absence of Irish legislation on the issue, was informed of the Draft Bill and of the government’s intention to enact the required legislation. It was intended that the Family Bill would also be enacted by the end of 2014.
I unexpectedly in May 2014 resigned from office under a cloud of now indisputably false allegations. Following my departure, the surrogacy provisions, which were a cause of some political discomfort within the then-taoiseach’s office, were dropped from the Bill which was ultimately enacted in April 2015.
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To this day, badly needed comprehensive legislation on surrogacy has not been enacted.
Later in 2014, the Supreme Court criticised the State’s failure to enact surrogacy legislation. You report (News, November 16th) Mr Justice John Jordan of the High Court, on the fifth day of a court hearing relating to the State’s failure to legislate for international surrogacy, expressing dissatisfaction upon learning from a newspaper report that such legislation is now intended, and saying the situation is unfair both to the couple who have taken the court case and to the court. He is right.
Too many lives are destroyed as a result of gambling, and the failure to date to enact a modern gambling law to regulate the gambling industry is a major contributory factor. Too many families and children born through surrogacy have been left in a legal limbo by the failure to date to enact a comprehensive surrogacy law. Such law is urgently required in the best interests of children to recognise on a sound legal footing parental and wider family relationships, to provide absolute clarity with regard to parental rights and for parents’ peace of mind.
It is a total mystery to me why the required gambling and surrogacy laws were not prioritised, as they should have been, and enacted within a year of my leaving ministerial office. – Yours, etc,
ALAN SHATTER,
Dublin 16.