Ms Tracy O'Keeffe:

Section 6C of the Guardianship of Infants Act was introduced by the Children and Family Relationships Act 2015. Its main purpose was to deal with the reality of family life as it now is for many Irish families, where we have so many blended families and new relationships being formed. Its main purpose was to deal with situations where people who had children in previous relationships came together and were cohabiting or had got married or civil partnered and to deal with the relationships between the adults in those families and the children.

It was considered at the time, in view of those kinds of circumstances, that a two-year period would be appropriate. In fairness, the situation of a child who is born through surrogacy is something different. The possibility of looking at reducing that waiting period in a surrogacy or a donor-assisted human reproduction situation is one of the options mentioned in the issues paper as a possibility that could be examined.