The source of Rogers' astonishment was a just completed address to the High Court by Bryan Murray, representing the attorney general, present incase constitutional issues are raised in the hearing. Murray's submission weighed heavily in favour of Roche's wife, Mary. Thus, the government appeared to be taking sides in a personal, highly intimate dispute between a private couple.

Murray's arguments were legally based, but there is no escaping the political ramifications of the case. If Mary Roche wins this round, matters relating to the constitutional issues to do with reproductive rights will not have to be explored. Defining the "unborn" can be further longfingered.

The government is off the hook, certainly for the remainder of the current Dail. The slumbering beast that is the pro-life movement will not be awakened to queer the pitch of a general election.

If Tom Roche wins, and his wife proceeds on the belief that the embryos constitute unborn life, then there could be hell to pay at the polls. Horribly, the family and fate of a private couple may not just be linked to political impotence over two decades, but the grasp for power at the next election.

In court, the couple didn't acknowledge each other's presence. Mary Roche is 41 now. During the week she sat to the side of Court Eleven, a modern room with high windows and bulbous lamps. She was accompanied by two other women and an elderly man.

Tom Roche, who is three years his wife's senior, sat at the back of the court in the company of one, and sometimes two, other men. The estranged couple were both casually dressed and looked as if they would prefer to be anywhere rather than a public forum where the most intimate details of their lives were being aired.

The packed courtroom was black with barristers. Five senior counsel, all top dogs in their line of work, manned the front benches. A battery of juniors sat behind, and another row was occupied by the curious and idle from the Law Library.

In legal terms, the case has the potential to explore deep crevices mined with ethical and political dynamite. In effect, the courts have been forced to take the initiative in the absence of law making in the Oireachtas.

Such is the enormity of the issues that the human dimension can get lost amid the clatter of law and politics. It's a profoundly sad story about coupling and decoupling, touching on fears and anxieties that abound in modern Ireland for many at the foothills of middle age.

The couple met in 1985 and married seven years later. After giving birth to a boy in 1997, Mary Roche had problems conceiving again. The couple decided to try in vitro fertility treatment, which can be painful and traumatic, but is increasingly popular at a time when fertility rates are plummeting. Success is far from guaranteed, with chances of a positive outcome less than 50%.

The Roches attended the Sims Clinic in Rathgar in early 2002. Six embryos were successfully created. In late January, the couple each signed consent forms, which are at the heart of the current dispute. Three of the embryos were implanted in Mary Roche's womb, the other three frozen. This is standard procedure in IVF treatment.

The low success rate renders the prospect of repeat treatment highly possible.

The couple were successful with the first implantation and Mary Roche became pregnant. For a period, it looked as if her plans of a nuclear family were on track.

"I was in love with the man, " she told the court on Tuesday. "I went through IVF treatment to have his children. I would have done anything for him."

She told the court of what the procedure meant to her. "To understand how I feel, you have to go through IVF, " she said. "It's how our daughter came into this world. When you see the results of IVF, it's a miracle."

While Mary Roche was relating the human reaction to IVF on Tuesday, the legal and political morass in which the treatment lingers was evident across the river in Leinster House.

Exasperation prompted senator Mary Henry and TDs Liz McManus and Liam Twomey to walk out of a health committee meeting. As far as they were concerned, the Fianna Fail members on the committee were blocking the publication of a draft report on legislation for IVF.

Currently, there is not one scrap of legislation governing the area, a shocking indictment of an allegedly developed, progressive western democracy. As with the broader reproductive rights matter, many politicians seem to be running scared from even touching on anything to do with it.

"I think they want to bury it until after the next election, " Senator Henry told the Sunday Tribune. "But this is of such importance, it is a health issue, for the health of the mother, the child, the family.

"I can understand why they don't want to touch the issue of defining the unborn, but the draft report didn't go near that. Why should something like registering clinics be divisive? As it is, anybody can set up a clinic. And matters like consent . . . which is being dealt with in the current court case . . . and storing tissue and counselling. These are really important issues and we are making no progress."

Back in the High Court, Mary Roche was relating how her family came apart before it had even been completed. Her husband would attend work-related social events to which their spouses weren't invited, and following one in August 2002 when she was seven months pregnant, he failed to come home. After that, she noticed he began to withdraw from her.

Their daughter was born in October.

Within four weeks, Tom Roche told his wife he was having an affair. "It turned my life upside down, " Mary Roche said.

He moved out for a few weeks, returned for a few more, and then left for good on St Stephen's Day that year. Before he left, they discussed the frozen embryos. According to Mary Roche, he suggested destroying them. She said they were their children.

"I was horrified, " she told the court.

"I can't destroy them. They are my children. It would be ethically and morally wrong, " she said.

The clinic refuses to release the embryos without the express consent of both man and woman, but it has indicated that it will abide by any court order. Whether or not Tom Roche has already signed an irretrievable consent for implantation is the kernel of the current phase of the case. This is what has been described as the "private law" aspect.

On 29 January 2002, Tom Roche signed a consent form. His lawyer Rogers argues that this was consenting to fertilisation, rather than implantation. "He couldn't have been consenting to treatment for his wife involving a medical procedure on her, " Rogers told the court. In addition, Rogers contends that if the court finds there was consent for implantation, his client should be allowed to revoke it in light of his right to determine the size of his family. Mary Roche's lawyers say that the consent was for IVF treatment in its totality and that it is irretrievable.

If Judge Brian McGovern rules in his favour, the case will move onto the "constitutional" phase, examining whether the embryos constitute the "unborn" prior to implantation. If he rules in her favour, that's the end of the case, pending an appeal.

As the marriage disintegrated, the couple went through mediation and family law proceedings. Joint custody of their children was agreed, but Tom Roche told the court there is an ongoing problem about access. He is now in another relationship and doesn't want any more children.

On Wednesday, Mary Roche was asked whether she would expect her husband to maintain any children that might result from implantation.

"My husband is the legal father and he has a duty to care for our children, " she said. It was put to her that there was a possibility that she might have twins, which would necessitate a period away from work. Would he be responsible for such costs incurred?

"He is their father, " she said.

Tom Roche told the court he didn't want any more children. "It's my human right, " he said. At the time of the IVF, he saw it as giving one more go for a child. "We never discussed further children, " he said.

Cross-examined by Inge Clissman, he accepted that the embryos were "deserving of respect" related to careful storage and he believed they should be kept indefinitely in storage.

By Thursday morning, Rogers was replying to what he described as the "dramatic" position taken by the AG that the consent forms signed by Tom Roche in 2002 mean there can be subsequent implantations without any new consent from him.

Rogers said it should be rejected by the court on the grounds of public policy and because the consent did not clearly identify the circumstances under which a person could be forced to become a father. (Ironically, the counsel for the AG . . . who is the government's legal adviser . . . made submissions on an issue that the government has failed to legislate on. If the AG has advised the government in the same manner, then his advice has gone unheeded, or at least unlegislated. Maybe he wants to be represented at this case out of despair at the inaction by his client, the government. ) McGovern is expected to rule on 18 July on the "private law" or consent issue in the case. Few expect the matter to conclude there.

In the meantime, the Roches' private pain will continue to bear the burden of being a test vehicle for public policy, as the torturous issue of reproductive rights bounces back and forth between legislature and the courts.

Dr Gerry Whyte Senior law lecturer in Trinity College I was a member of the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction, and I wasn't convinced by the majority view that the embryo should not be protected by law until implantation in a woman's womb. There are a number of difficulties with this point of view. For example, if medical technology progressed, and it became possible to develop an embryo outside the womb, you could have a situation where a new entity has no legal protection. Should there be two categories of life . . . one naturally conceived and one which develops outside the womb? And only one legally protected? I believe there should be a limit on the number of embryos created by IVF, so that no surplus embryos are created.

Ivana Bacik Lawyer, campaigner for women's rights The 1983 amendment was always going to throw up these problems, because it is flawed. It should be removed completely.

The word 'unborn' should never have been included, because no one was sure what it meant.

It's just common sense that a word that no one understands shouldn't be in the constitution. We need a referendum to remove the amendment, but I don't think the government is going to hold a referendum at the moment. They aren't willing to act in this area, but it clearly needs a political intervention.

John Waters Journalist It is the most bizarre situation. That anyone would feel that you can impose a choice on someone, and then make them pay for it is utterly contorted.

In this situation the mother is seeking to have a child against the father's will. So now a woman has a right to have a child, or not to have a child, and the father has no say whatsoever. The 'right to choose' is a one-way system.

Why don't we just have a sperm bank where it is mandatory for men to ejaculate into a bottle on the third Saturday of every month, and just let women come and collect it at their leisure. Because that is where we are headed.

The connection between child and father is being denied. One man's sperm is the same as another. All the focus is on the mother.

'Whatever Women Want' . . . the law in three words, and let the man go to hell.

It is deeply unsatifactory that these extremely complicated issues are being decided in court. It should be manifestly obvious to anyone that the Irish court system is grotesquely ignorant about the role of a father in a child's life.

I don't expect anything but nonsense to emerge from this case. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if the mother won.How can we possibly get to the root of this case when we haven't sorted out the fundamental issues? It's like hoovering your carpet when you haven't got a roof.