Professor Conor O'Mahony:

In principle, either could be done. Going back to the point I made earlier about the delays we have seen in reaching this point and the risk of opportunities being lost, even though from a technical legal point of view the Government could deal with donor-assisted human reproduction in one Bill and surrogacy in another, I would be of the view that it would be better in this legislation to take as comprehensive an approach as possible to dealing with issues arising in respect of both donor-assisted human reproduction and surrogacy, first of all to ensure we do not miss those opportunities and, second, to try to establish a degree of consistency to avoid discriminatory approaches. For example, the Bill as it currently stands would create a discriminatory approach on the right to identity whereby children born following surrogacy arrangements would be able to access identifying information at the age of 16 whereas children born following donor-assisted reproduction would have to wait until the age of 18. It is about trying to avoid some of those anomalies. Dealing with them both in a single piece of legislation lends itself more effectively to a comprehensive and consistent approach.