Dublin’s Rotunda hospital IVF clinic has shut down its business arrangement with a fertility clinic in the Ukraine, because of “significant concerns”, according to a report in the Sunday Times.

The business involved the supply of donor eggs, but the arrangement ceased last September because of governance issues, and a rapid staff turnover at the Ukraine clinic.

Donor eggs were fertilised with Irish sperm at the Ukraine clinic before frozen embryos were sent back to Ireland for implantation.

Unnotified changes

Rotunda IVF, part of the Sims group owned by Australian company Virtus Health, said: “There were material and unnotified changes in senior staff in the clinic, for which we were not given any reason.

“Because of pandemic restrictions we could not travel to investigate the issues. We cannot engage with any third-party clinic, unless it has absolute satisfaction as to the professionalism and effectiveness of the service.”

The Rotunda IVF clinic said that the shipping of gametes from Ukraine had become “more complex and precarious” because of the virus.

“We need to be absolutely satisfied at all times in terms of quality and clinical acceptability,” the clinic said.

Last May, the BBC reported that babies born to surrogates in Ukraine were being cared for by nursing staff in hotel rooms, as they lay unclaimed by “commissioning parents” unable to travel due to virus restrictions.

Medical-negligence cases

The Sunday Times also reports that three medical-negligence cases have been filed against Rotunda IVF in the High Court in the past month.

One couple allege “systemic failings” in the egg-donor programme.

Augustus Cullen Law is representing a couple who allege that the use of a contaminated instrument ended their chances of conception.