Professor Deirdre Madden:

I raised the issue of Ireland copying flawed English legislation, which is a not unknown phenomenon in this jurisdiction. There certainly are better frameworks out there, and I have referred to some of them in my submission. California and New Hampshire are those which are most easily accessible in terms of language, but also in terms of the clarity achieved. The Commission on Assisted Reproduction recommended that a child born through surrogacy should be presumed to be that of the intended parents. The frameworks I refer to as better frameworks would adopt that model. They recognise the parentage of the intended parents before birth to make sure there is no ambiguity from the moment of birth and to avoid any legal uncertainty. That process of recognising legal parentage of intended parents can be achieved by a judicial process during the pregnancy, or before the pregnancy commences, to ensure that everyone is appropriately screened and counselled and has availed of independent legal advice so that all concerned know the relationships they are going to engage in and to ensure the transfer of parentage occurs at that earlier time. That, in my view, would lead to a much better outcome for the child, and would be a much better framework.