A fertility expert has warned a badly-worded piece of legislation could prevent women from freezing their eggs.
Professor Mary Wingfield has said the wording of the Assisted Human Reproduction Bill could have unintended consequences.
Prof Wingfield is former clinical director of the Merrion Fertility Clinic.
She told Pat Kenny this needs to be changed.
"The wording of the bill at the moment is a treatment provider would only be allowed to provide treatment in the case of a woman if she was unlikely to become pregnant or give birth without that treatment.
"It's basically saying the treatment could only be provided for a woman who has infertility.
"Assisted reproduction started off as a treatment - IVF was a treatment for infertility.
"But now it's used for a lot more reasons, and egg freezing is one of them."
'It would preclude egg freezing'
Prof Wingfield said most women who freeze their eggs do not know whether they will have fertility problems or not.
"If a woman wants to freeze her eggs in case she needs them in the future, she doesn't know if she has infertility or not.
"So technically by the way this is worded, it would preclude egg freezing.
"I don't think anyone intended it to be this way - I think it's just a problem with the wording.
And she said there are some other policies that should also be looked into.
"If a couple have embryos frozen, and one of them dies, the current draft legislation says that a woman can use the embryos if her male partner dies or - if it's a same-sex couple - if her female partner dies.
"But if a man's partner dies, he can't use those embryos.
"It's unusual to be fighting [for] equality for men, but I think that does discriminate against men.
"It's not something that would happen very often...but the legislation allows for single men to conceive - to use assisted human reproduction techniques.
"It allows transgender men, it allows men in same-sex couples - and all that's right - but it's not really fair to men whose partner has died", she said.
