Professor Conor O'Mahony:

I thank the Deputy. In my report, the safeguards which would be in place consist essentially of court supervision of surrogacy arrangements. In order to have a surrogacy agreement recognised and to have parentage transferred from a surrogate mother to intending parents, a judge would be assigned. As part of the ongoing process around the establishment of specialist family courts, we would have specially trained judges with expertise in child and family law who would be in a position to supervise the arrangement and test whether the range of criteria and safeguards which one would insert in the legislation have been met. My report makes recommendations for what that legislation might look like. Of course, one could add additional safeguards. A judge would have to be satisfied that those safeguards have been complied with before an order could be made transferring parentage from the surrogate mother to the intending parents.

My report recommends that that process could arise both in the context of domestic surrogacy and international surrogacy. As we have mentioned, the Bill only makes proposals in that respect in relation to domestic surrogacy. It does not include any proposals around international surrogacy. The discussion this morning, which I was listening to, was the first opportunity I have had to hear the rationale from the Department. I believe there is an issues paper being prepared. I have not had any engagement with the Department since I submitted my report and I was not aware of the reasoning around why the recommendations have not been implemented. I can elaborate on this as the session continues but in my view, it would be possible to put in place a court supervision process that could address the question of whether safeguards have been complied with in an international context as well as in a domestic process. That process, however, given the more complex reality of international surrogacy, would have to be a more involved and more detailed process than it would be for domestic surrogacy.