Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their valuable contributions, which can be of great assistance to us in considering the heads of the Bill. It is good to hear a general welcome expressed for the long overdue introduction of these heads. I would like to acknowledge former Senator Mary Henry in the Visitors Gallery, who I know has done a lot of work on this issue over many years to try to bring forward legislation like this.

I wish to focus on two issues. Both submissions from the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists referred to definitions as potentially problematic; in particular, the current definitions which exclude what we call gestational surrogacy, or the traditional surrogacy arrangement where a surrogate mother uses her own reproductive material to become pregnant. I find slightly concerning a comment in the note on head 2, which states that there are compelling public policy reasons to exclude traditional surrogacy arrangements, as the effect would be to allow a woman to contract out of her parental responsibility for a child which is clearly hers, both by genetics and by birth. It would seem to me that the more compelling public policy reason is to protect the child born as a result of such an arrangement who currently is without any protection or regulation in law and who, following enactment of a Bill in this format, would still be without protection. Do the witnesses have a view on whether the Bill should therefore have a broader definition of surrogacy to include a surrogate mother who is using her own reproductive material to become pregnant?