Professor Conor O'Mahony:

When we talk about the differences between guardianship and parentage, the day-to-day decision-making issues are generally covered by guardianship. Citizenship and inheritance are situations where one gets a divergence between the impact of parentage and guardianship. Potentially, one could build a workaround on that into the legislation. That is not beyond the bounds of possibility.

Mr. Kenny Moore mentioned the question of children making decisions for their parents down the line. Even though we use the term "next of kin" in a day-to-day context, it has no legal status at the moment. Even in cases of children who are recognised and where there is a full relationship, parentage currently does not give a legal right to make decisions for parents down the line. The Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act, which is just about to be commenced, is the legislative framework that deals with this sort of issue and would be the home for addressing this question. However, it does not have a direct bearing on the question of guardianship versus parentage under current law.