Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This exchange is an unusual experience for me, and almost triggering for me, listening to the process being explored by officials, having gone through the process myself.

I wish to thank the officials for their extraordinary dedication, integrity and support that has been given throughout all of the years, and exceptionally so in the last number of months. As evidence of that I have text messages from Department officials that were sent as early as 6 a.m. and as late as 1.30 a.m. on one Sunday morning. They have shown extraordinary dedication to Irish citizens and prospective Irish citizens. Mrs. Fannon was at the heart of it all. I do not know how many emails that there have been at this stage but at the heart of all of that has been an extraordinary amount of work done by her and all of the officials. I thank all of them. The interdepartmental surrogacy group has worked extraordinarily hard over the last month in trying to deal with what is an unprecedented situation, particularly in terms of Ukraine.

What the officials have set out for us is quite onerous and detailed. The standard which parents or intended parents - they are parents to me - bringing home their child has to reach in terms of documentary and DNA evidence is very high. All that is set out in a document provided by the Department of Justice as long as ten years ago in 2012. The document was done by the Department officials and in conjunction with the then Minister for Justice and Equality, Alan Shatter. There are other finer details that I feel are important enough to be drawn out today. I refer to the fact that the DNA evidence is not just a matter of doing a quick swab and placing that in an envelope. The test is done by the Ormond Quay Paternity Services, which is a court recognised organisation in Ireland, and its standard of proof is accepted by the Irish courts in all sorts of paternity matters. Also, the DNA evidence must be taken in the presence of an embassy official and a doctor who has been nominated by the embassy. Therefore, a person cannot just run to any old doctor and pull them in. The embassy must approve the doctor. Everything is done in a transparent fashion. Also, the surrogate mother must be present. In recent weeks, we have had discussions about that, given we have people inside and outside of the Ukraine. It is important that the public hears about the fastidious level of detail that is required.

When one arrives home in Ireland, the first thing one does is contact the public health nurse to register the baby. Then one gets one's solicitor to issue proceedings because one has given an undertaking to do that. Then one arrives into court and the Judiciary looks through one's documentation. The fact that an emergency travel certificate was issued almost means, in and of itself, that a standard of proof has been reached. In a sense, the witnesses are like gatekeepers, although I do not want to undermine the role of the Judiciary in this. This has been vetted by people in the country in which the baby was born, departmental officials who are very experienced and then there is judicial oversight, before any of the orders that Ms O'Keeffe referred to so well are made.

Part of me just wants the witnesses to confirm what I have said. By the time one has that emergency travel certificate in one's hand when coming home, a lot of work has gone into proving the bona fides. One of the things that has been explained over the past few weeks is that the presence of the surrogate mother with the embassy official is, in itself, ensuring consent. The point in all of that is that the intended mother is a bystander to all of this. There is a delicacy and a sadness in that when one is a bystander to something so precious. I invite the witnesses to comment on or confirm that before I move on.