Dr. Mary Wingfield:

This is one of the issues with commercial surrogacy, in that a good portion of the costs involved usually goes to the company that organises the arrangement. We know, for example, that intrauterine insemination is a much cheaper treatment, at hundreds of euro, than IVF, which costs approximately €5,000 in Ireland. There are no figures in regard to surrogacy in this country, but my understanding is that in the case of altruistic surrogacy in the United Kingdom, for instance, the expenses for the surrogate would be of the order of £15,000. The precise amount will depend on the surrogate's income and so on in the context of compensation for loss of earnings. The surrogate needs to be compensated and the clinic providing the treatment needs to be paid, but we would be anxious to avoid a situation in which a third party is making a fortune out of it, which is what tends to happen internationally.