Mr. Karl Duff:

I can speak to children's rights, which are the focus of my Department. It might be for the Department of Justice to speak more specifically to parentage. Our primary concern is very much the child's identity, understanding his or her origin, and the current work we are doing on birth information and tracing. We are very keen that where children are born through surrogacy, as they grow up and become adults they understand the nature and origin of their birth and can access their birth information, which we are working so hard on for people who were adopted, boarded out or the subject of an illegal birth registration here in Ireland. We are working very hard on legislation on that. As for children's rights, we would like to see something similar for the child born through surrogacy.