Dr. Lydia Bracken:

Currently, if a person has had a child through donor-assisted human reproduction, DAHR, once Parts 2 and 3 of the Children and Family Relationships Act 2015 are commenced, sections 20 to 22, inclusive, will allow for a retrospective application to be made. A person can go to court to be recognised, along with a partner, as the legal parents of that child. There is no equivalent provision in the assisted human reproduction Bill we are discussing. If a child has already been born through surrogacy, there is no equivalent process to go to court and have both intending parents recognised as legal parents. In my opening submission, I mentioned that second parent adoption, although it is not allowed, could be the only solution. Otherwise a person could apply for guardianship of the child if that person is not currently recognised as an intended parent. We do not have provision within the Bill to retrospectively recognise parentage. We argue that a similar process to that which applies in cases of DAHR should be allowed for cases of surrogacy. It would create parity in our legislation and recognise the fact that a number of children have been born through surrogacy in the past number of years. A survey was released last year or the year before indicating that Ireland is currently the second-highest user of surrogacy in the world. Many children have been born through surrogacy who need their family relationships to be regularised. One way to do that is to include provisions in this assisted human reproduction Bill allowing for retrospective parentage.