Letters to the Editor: My surrogate children are not recognised as mine in Ireland
Christ Holland writes: 'Both our children have been recognised by the UK and Australian governments as our children.' However: 'Ireland remains the country with which we have a lasting and legitimate connection that refuses to do so.' Picture: iStock
I write in response to your article — ‘Two men and a surrogacy: Irish couple forced to stay in NY so they can have children’ (Irish Examiner, March 4).
I am an Irish citizen and my Australian husband and I live in the UK.
We have had two children by surrogacy processes which took place in the UK and which only permits altruistic surrogacy arrangements. Both our children have been recognised by the UK and Australian governments as our children.
Regulations about multiple nationalities notwithstanding, Ireland remains the country with which we have a lasting and legitimate connection that refuses to do so.
The proposed wording in the Health (Assisted Human Reproduction) Bill 2022 still does not seem to offer any prospect of this recognition.
We know of a significant diaspora of Irish citizens in the same situation and can easily imagine the total number of children awaiting retrospective parental orders will be large. It would be a harsh blow to those families overseas if the State continues to not recognise them whilst recognising other families created via surrogacy.
We will certainly not be contemplating any return to Ireland, after many years away, without the reassurance that both our parental rights will be recognised for both our children.
The cynicism and hypocrisy of Sinn Féin never ceases to amaze me.
At a press conference several days ago, Michelle O’Neill, in commenting on the resignation of Leo Varadkar engaged in language what the Tánaiste described as “very partisan behaviour”.
Her remarks were in marked contrast to the gracious and generous words that Leo made when she was successfully installed as first minister of the Northern Ireland power-sharing executive.
However, not only do I take exception to the tone of her comments on the taoiseach, but her accusation that he has been involved in successive governments that have failed for 13 years to provide adequate housing in the Republic of Ireland.
Furthermore, I challenge her to tell Republic of Ireland voters of Sinn Féin’s record, while in government in Northern Ireland, on its housing crisis. Sinn Féin has been in and out of office in Northern Ireland for over two decades. Like the DUP, it also collapsed Stormont.
Ironically just several days before her comments about the Fine Gael government’s record on housing, damning comments were made about the failures of Northern Ireland’s political parties on housing. Since 2007, on several occasions they have held the joint position of first minister at Stormont and have also held the influential posts of ministers for finance and housing respectively — key posts for influencing policy and action on housing problems. So what is Sinn Féin’s record in Northern Ireland?
On March 14, the Northern Ireland Department for the Communities published its latest bulletin on the homelessness. It stated that, from July 2023 to December 2023, 8,183 households presented themselves as homeless (the population of the Republic is 2.7 times the population of the North, so it would be the equivalent of 22,094 households here).
Furthermore, the figures were based on households yet many of these households would have been multiple occupancies. In the Republic, the Department of Housing reported in November 2023 that there were 13,179 people (including children) who were homeless. Therefore, the figures in the Republic by comparison are much lower than in the North.
In the Agenda for the 2024 Housing Conference which took place on March 20 in the Europa Hotel, Belfast, it was stated: “Figures from the end of March 2023 show that 45,105 are on the social housing waiting list — the highest number Northern Ireland has seen for years.”
It is important to point out again that as the population of the Republic is almost 2.7 times that of the North, therefore the equivalent figure if it had happened in the Republic would be 121,783. In marked contrast, figures for the Republic published on March 24, 2023, showed that there was a 36.8% decrease in the social housing waiting list since the first annual assessment was conducted in 2016.
Voters in the Republic should reflect on the housing record of Sinn Féin in the North where in government with the opportunity to put their policies into action they have failed. Based on the cited figures already mentioned, a Sinn Féin-led government in the Republic, aside from their empty rhetoric, is unlikely to solve the present housing problem.
The Irish Government’s decision to intervene in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is to be welcomed. However, the Government itself is not without blame in such very serious matters.
South Africa initiated its genocide case against Israel in December 2023, and the ICJ issued its preliminary verdict on January 26 stating: “It is plausible that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The State of Israel must take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of genocide.”
Following on from these proceedings and findings, the Genocide Convention 1948 obliges all states including Ireland to “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of genocide”.
The US government and the US military have been actively supporting Israel in its military actions in Gaza since October and this has continued since January 26: Up to 100 aircraft associated with the US military have transited through Shannon airport or Irish airspace since in that time.
The Irish Government has questions to answer before the ICJ with regard to its failures to comply with the Genocide Convention and its failures to prevent complicity in genocide.
Pushing up the price of fuel again just goes to show how out of touch this Government is with the ordinary working man/woman in this country.
More tax again and for what? Do they not think they have stolen enough money from peoples wages and pockets with a record breaking €3.8bn tax take last year on fuel alone.
Since the war in Ukraine started you can see for yourself our fuel arrives into Whitegate from America, once a week (look up Vessel Finder). The war is just an excuse to push up the price again.
This Government doesn’t give a toss for the ordinary people in this country.
Ireland is submerged under a trembling wave of ineptitude, the offsets of which greet us every day but let’s count some of the ways:
- The worst housing crisis in our modern history;
- 13,531 people without homes, 4,027 of whom are children;
- A healthcare system plagued by failures;
- Ranked as the most expensive country in the EU.
So, during a recent pre-leadership address to his party Fine Gael, what did soon-to-be taoiseach Simon Harris meticulously handpick as the uppermost political issue which has chiefly inspired his chagrin? The amorphous call that we need to “take our flag back” — from whom, exactly?
With no indication of how such vaguery could be enforced, the display read as pantomime in the vein of an angry substitute teacher. If a tree falls in the forest, can we not then instead look at capping rent prices, or allowing for the 327 children currently waiting to finally access their much needed scoliosis surgery, as they were promised (by Harris himself)?
Sixty-eight per cent of people under 35 cannot afford to live independently, and the impending social ramifications of this are barely acknowledged in our cultural parlance.
So many of us either live in fear of, or have friends at risk, of homelessness, and skipping meals to pay utilities is often an inevitability — so why are we treated by our leadership as idealist agitators when we let out inevitable sighs of exasperation?
Increasingly, Fine Gael seem to hide behind the paper-thin bulwark of respectability optics to avert justified criticism and anger.
For Simon Harris and his party, it seems much more acceptable to offer a hollow congratulations and polite albeit unsteady votes of confidence than it is to express anger and sadness for the lives in Ireland that are becoming increasingly difficult to live, and the missed potential of lives that could have been lived under more competent leadership.
We deserve better, and a general election can’t come soon enough.
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