‘Science will not wait for us to update our laws’

THE Supreme Court has criticised as “disturbing” the state’s continuing failure to enact laws to regulate fertility treatment.

Mr Justice Adrian Hardiman warned, if the legislature does not address these issues, Ireland may become by default “an unregulated environment for practices which may prove controversial or, at least, to give rise to a need for regulation”.

Mr Justice Hugh Geoghegan said spare embryos, “being lives or at least potential lives”, should be treated with respect. The absence of laws indicating how that respect should be given was “undesirable and arguably contrary to the spirit of the Constitution”.