Ms Ciara Merrigan:

Irish Families Through Surrogacy was established approximately 14 or 15 months ago with a group of mammies. We have had a few dads join us on the way as well, which is great. They kind of keep our ICT in check anyway. We all work full-time. All this work we are doing is in the evening time. Although at the moment we are very focused on the campaign, we do an awful lot of advocacy work in the background with couples, taking calls at 1 o'clock and 6 o'clock in the morning. That is still ongoing but the vision going forward is that Irish Families Through Surrogacy would become more of a formal organisation with perhaps some State support. We would be set up formally and be there to support parents, children and surrogates domestically who will be going through this process. We would have guidelines set up around the procedures and processes a person goes through but also guidelines on how to tell one's child that he or she was born through surrogacy. They need to be based on lived experiences, like how Ms von Meding explained that she has told her children or the experiences of my other colleagues here as well.

We also spoke about counselling earlier. I would agree with that. There definitely needs to be counselling. It is an opportunity to have an in-house counsellor attached to the organisation and, therefore, develop that whole specialty in itself. At the same time, one can have the formality of a counsellor but learning from other parents is just as important too. Irish Families Through Surrogacy would be there as a vehicle for that to happen.

We would also like to have a few fun days out with our kids. One of the nice things about our group forming is that our children spend time with each other now. We recently all had a trip down to Cathy Wheatley's farm in Wicklow and I can confirm she is a sheep farmer as we have seen the lambs. It is lovely for our children to meet with each other so that it becomes the norm that they meet other children who were brought into this world in a slightly different way but who are 100% loved by their parents. That is the vision. I hope the energies that have been put into this campaign can, once the legislation is introduced, be put into guiding, supporting and continuing to advocate, but also bringing our kids together and having fun days out as well.