Mr. Gearóid Kenny Moore:

I have a brief contribution on the question around counselling. As I mentioned, we undertook our initial surrogacy journey in Canada, where counselling is required for all participants, including the donor, the surrogate and the intended parents. There is a prescribed set of sessions that must take place for each of the parties and they deal with the key issues that arise. For example, for the intended parents there would be discussion of how they will work through IVF and the stress and strain that would cause for a relationship. There would be discussion of how to cope with telling friends and families about the child that might be about to arrive or how to cope with introducing your child to the community where you live. For the surrogate there is a similar set of core sessions that must take place, and depending on what is unearthed in those sessions, further sessions may be arranged.

As Ms O'Connell touched on, as children go through life, they will be treated or looked at in a different way, especially or potentially if they have same-sex parents. As parents, we are thinking about or working through what kind of counselling may be needed for them. To summarise, counselling and advice, whether it is psychological or medical advice for all parties, is vital. We thought we knew loads about being parents before the kids were born, but the counselling sessions unearthed or initiated for us so many conversations between us and our surrogate mother. They were absolutely vital.

There was a question about contact with the surrogate. Our experience in Canada was that we were required to create a legally binding contract with the surrogate mother and discuss all matters pertaining to the journey pre-conception, during pregnancy and post-birth. The level of contact agreed between parties was written into the contract. When we went to the UK, it was a personal arrangement and we had no requirement to make a contract. In fact, we were not allowed to do so under UK law because the surrogate mother was the legal mother and we did not have any right to create a contract that would contradict that. We created a written agreement with her, and although she was a friend, we wanted to discuss all the permutations and combinations. We inserted in the agreement what contact would look like post-birth. With the agreement of all parties, we have gone beyond the terms of the contract by doing lots more than we ever envisaged in terms of meeting and having her involved with our children's life and story.