Dr. Andrea Mulligan:

I thank the Deputy. Those are all interesting and complex questions. I will take them in turn. I think her first question was on this not being covered properly in Irish law as it stands. That is right. The committee is aware of this but essentially the way surrogacy is governed in Irish law at the moment is there is no special law for surrogacy at all. If you enter into a general surrogacy arrangement you just fall under the general provisions of Irish law. I have acted for couples in this situation in court. When we are dealing with it we are bending Irish family law to try to make surrogacy fit into it. That is the reason there is no way for the genetic mother to be recognised as a parent because under Irish law the mother is the birth mother and there is no way to ever change that. That is an unchangeable rule in Irish law whereas there are provisions for unmarried fathers to be recognised as parents of their children and then become guardians. That is the law an intended father uses. There is no special law for surrogacy and Irish law just has those general rules and we try to fit surrogacy arrangements into them. That is the reason we need to look at what we do about that. At the outset, it is useful to think about how there will always be arrangements that are not compliant. No matter how thorough your regulatory framework is there will be some arrangements that do not fit into that and they cannot get a parental order. They will probably fall to being regulated by the general provisions of family law anyway, so that is just something to think about. No matter how well you regulate there will be that category and they may end up back in the world of general family law, which may include adoption. That is just something important to think about.

On which option is best, that is a taxonomy of approaches I presented for the committee's ease. They are not set in stone or gospel.