Mr. Gearóid Kenny Moore:

I echo the Deputy's point that legislation is needed as soon as possible. That must also retrospectively cover children already born. With regard to travel documents, Mr. Lennon and I are here to represent parents who primarily access surrogacy through Canada, the United States and the UK. As the process is covered by legislation in Canada and the United States and everybody's rights and responsibilities are clearly defined, the parents can apply on behalf of their child when it is born for a passport from those two countries.

A newborn child can return home from the UK on the basis of its birth certificate because of the travel arrangements between Ireland the UK. Provided the parents carry appropriate travel documents, they can come back to Ireland with their newborn baby on the basis of the child having a birth certificate. What happens when the child gets back here to Ireland? That is where it gets tough because there is no legislation unlike in the three destinations I have mentioned.

If the parents wish to apply for an Irish passport for their child, the application will proceed on the basis of the father having a genetic link to his child and he will become the applicant. The surrogate mother, if the application is made before the declaration of parentage has been applied for by the father in the Irish courts, will also have to sign the passport application. That causes significant complexity.

As Mr. Lennon alluded to, surrogate mothers in our experience enter these agreements and arrangements with full consent. They know exactly what they are being asked to do by the intended parents and what they wish to do for them. They do not want to be the mother of these children or to have legal responsibility for them. They want that to be applied to the intended parents. When they are asked to sign passport documents, it often causes them anxiety because it suddenly seems the State is coming back to them to say they are the mothers.

When the application is made here for an Irish passport, it has to come from the biological dad. If the declaration of parentage has not gone through the court system, which is often the case because it can take a long time, the surrogate mother will be required to co-sign that application. She will be contacted by the Passport Office in order to verify that she has signed the application. She is the second applicant.