Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Something that has come out of all of this is that women who need to pursue surrogacy as single women do not have an option to do so in this situation because there is no way to create citizenship even though she may be the biological mother and there is a donor father. Single intended mothers and same-sex female couples have the same issue. They cannot avail of surrogacy for these reasons. It is important to highlight this.

With regard to the presumption of parentage, Ormond Quay Paternity Services issued a report in 2008. The service does not deal only with surrogacy; it does DNA for all of our court's family law services. The report found that in 35% of its parentage testing in cases going through the Irish courts the person who thought he was the father was not the father. This is natural outside of surrogacy and IVF. Yet people who go through infertility issues in the State, and who have the minefield and journey of infertility issues are robustly tested for good reason and I am not for one minute saying we should undermine this. They go through all of this hassle and proving themselves and they can come back to Ireland and not have a legal relationship with the child. We have this double standard. It is not the fault of anybody here.

I heard what was said about communication. In defence, I have to say that in recent months the witnesses, the people behind them and the Office of the Attorney General have found themselves with unprecedented situations of surrogacies that should have happened in Ukraine, had the Russians not been so awful, and babies being born outside of this. They have had to react at very short notice, although we do try to plan or know the dates but sometimes babies come early and catch everybody by surprise. There has been extraordinary communication and extraordinary work and support. I hear all that has been said and I know-----