All last week media commentators and radio talk shows have been alive with debate about whether Mary Roche has the right to have three frozen embryos, which were fertilised five years ago under IVF treatment with her now-separated husband's sperm, implanted in her womb so that she may have a child . . . or even three . . . against his will.

This is ostensibly a High Court case about whether a contract should be legally binding when the circumstances of the signatories has changed so completely as to render the original agreement void. But of course it is much more than that because the personal circumstances of this couple are such a clear mirror of Irish society.

Their's is a story that, in one way or another, has resonances in every household, be it arguments over when, or if, to have children, the sorrow of infertility, the joy of birth especially after a difficult conception, the rigours of IVF, the anger and sorrow of separation, the relentless ticking of the female body clock, the desire of a man to complete his family by the age of 40.

Their's is also a story which they have been forced to ask the High Court to resolve because of the abject failure of politicians of all political colours to deal with the central issues, let alone the peripheral matters of regulating assisted human reproduction in this country. Once again, a judge is being asked to decide on complicated issues which our elected representatives should be tackling with leadership and courage rather than long-fingering to endless committees and consultants.

Because this is what they have done. It is a year since the Commission on Assisted Reproduction reported with a lengthy series of recommendations which covered many of the moral, ethical and practical issues surrounding IVF and other fertility treatments.

It even came up with a definition of when "unborn life" begins . . . when the embryo is implanted in the womb. An Oireachtas subcommittee on Health has since deliberated on the matter and last week sent its recommendations to the minister, Mary Harney, who, as the final submissions on the Roche case were being made in court, announced that legislation regulating fertility clinics was being drawn up.

While the fact that nine fertility clinics are being run in this country with no regulation over what they can or cannot do in terms of fertility treatments or the storage and disposal of possibly thousands of frozen embryos is bad enough, none of this addresses the elephant in the room.

Are those frozen embryos really "children" as Mary Roche argues, or does life begin at implantation as all but one of 25 members of the Commission on Assisted Reproduction recommended?

Can a woman force a man to become a father and, if she can, what are the reverse implications . . . surely the 'X' case told us that no man can force a woman, or child, to become a mother.

Is the constitutional right of a man to decide on the size and make up of his family greater than the right to potential life of a fertilised egg?

Yes, we are back in that territory . . . and only because our politicians are too cowardly to resolve this question for once and for all.