Irish Examiner view: Perfect is the enemy of good

Ireland’s IVF policies are unfinished business from the past two decades and are viewed as 'outdated and bureaucratic' by fertility experts

Melanie Dineen's late husband Dylan Fleming provided written consent for her to use his frozen sperm to conceive their child after his death. Picture: Dan Linehan

In the hyperfast, inter-connected, 2020s you might imagine that the timelag between medical advances and their recognition in the laws and conventions of society is shortening. But much of the evidence is to the contrary.

No more poignant example exists than the case reported by the Irish Examiner of the Macroom woman Melanie Dineen, whose late husband Dylan Fleming provided written consent for her to use his frozen sperm to conceive their child after his death.