Mr. Muiris O'Connor:

I can start. The question came up earlier and the Chair asked for a note on international examples and we will provide that. In summary we are not aware of any EU member state that has developed a legislative solution to the issue of international surrogacy. Our own AHR Bill and summary note provides an overview of the safeguards that collectively we and the Government have determined as necessary to balance the rights of the child to know his or her genetic origins and the rights of parents to be regarded as parents and the rights and safety of the surrogates. The challenge we and other legislators have encountered is while we can bottom out and specify the safeguards and the rights that we seek to protect and that we move to protect in their own jurisdiction, it is hard to envisage an Irish agency or a sub-agency as was suggested earlier, being in a position to provide the assurance.

It is hard to envisage an Irish agency or subagency, as was suggested earlier, being in a position to provide assurance around the extent to which those rights and safeguards were adhered to in another jurisdiction. As the Deputy said, an international agreement, perhaps building on international agreements in the area of adoption and so forth, would be very helpful. To the extent that they would emerge within the EU, there is a conundrum that many of the destinations in which surrogacy is availed of are not in the EU. They are to the east of the EU and in states in America. We will provide a note. We will see even beyond the law; I do not want to just close it off. People have struggled to legislate beyond our jurisdiction. Across the three Departments, we will look at practices for the returning family to see how all those objectives can be achieved.