Letter to the Oireachtas

Good morning,

My name is Edwina Oakes and I am the Chairperson of the Irish Fertility Counsellors Association (IFCA).

I would like to thank the Committee for the invitation to share our perspectives with you this morning.

The Irish Fertility Counsellors Association was founded in 2008 by a group of Specialist Fertility Counsellors in response to emerging issues clients were experiencing while preparing for investigations and treatment.

Since then, we have grown our membership to 25 professionally qualified counsellors/psychotherapists and psychologists with specialist training in fertility.

We believe the work we do holds significant value to clients who are thinking about or embarking on their fertility journey.

We believe that all patients who are making reproductive choices deserve the opportunity to speak to a qualified and experienced mental health professionals who can guide them through the implications of their decisions and support them as they make those decisions. Our role, as specialist fertility counsellors is to listen and support clients in a non-judgemental way.

There can be complex considerations around assisted reproduction which can be very challenging for the client/s. We believe that the provision of a structured counselling service in surrogacy cases serves to guard against exploitation of both the intending parents and is in the best interests of the resulting child.

As specialist fertility counsellors, we are trained to create a confidential and safe space for clients to talk through their feelings, concerns, losses and hopes and to explore the implications for the future, for them, and for their family.

IFCA would like to highlight the importance of implications counselling for intending parents and surrogates.

Implications counselling for intending parents is in-line with best international practice. It allows the intending parties an opportunity to carefully consider all possible implications of their decisions and how it may impact them in the future.

Implications counselling includes social, legal and ethical considerations to be considered when creating a family and it also allows the opportunity for the intending individuals to voice any concerns or fears they may have that may have. Specialist fertility implications counselling would assist in preventing the exploitation and coercion of intending parents and ensure an understanding of the full implications of the surrogacy process.

As specialist fertility counsellors are in the room with the intended parties, we are uniquely positioned to facilitate any areas of concern our client/s may have relating to the creating a human being.

There is some research that has been recently conducted by an IFCA member, Dr. Ciara Bryne, Clinical Psychologist, (PhD), in conjunction with NISIG (National Infertility Support and Information Group) , Dr. Byrne conducted research on the socio-emotional experience of these parents.

The research findings indicated there is a strong clinical need among Irish parents of children born through surrogacy for psychological support.

The key findings that emerged are :-

(i) Parents had concerns that their child would reject them.

(ii) Parents had significant concerns regarding disapproval from the community.

(iii) Parents felt they lacked the practical and emotional tools for communicating with their child about their origin story.

Equipping parents with tools for healthy family dialogue around their origin story is key to promoting positive mental health amongst children.

Golombok and colleagues at the University of Cambridge have spent four decades examining the impact of alternative family forms, including families created through donor conception and surrogacy, on the child and family’s psychological adjustment.

They have found that families who disclosed donor and surrogate origins to their children in the preschool years generally showed more positive emotional outcomes when the children reached middle childhood, than children from non-disclosing families.

In contrast, the evidence for surrogate or donor offspring who are told of their origins as adolescents or adults indicates negative emotional reactions such as shock, betrayal and confusion.

When parents choose not to disclose their origins through surrogacy and donor conception to their children, it is most often due to their own feelings of fear and perceived lack of tools in how to communicate with their children.

The Irish Fertility Counsellors Association are firmly committed to supporting all parties in surrogacy treatments to ensure that the process is normalised, humane and fair to all. High quality specialist fertility counselling is one way to ensure the risks of exploitation or coercion to intending parents is minimised. We are happy to engage further with this committee in any way they see fit and to answer any questions that the committee members may have, either today or at any future date.

My sincere thanks to you for the opportunity to address the committee today on this important issue.