Ms Caoimhe Nic Dhomhnaill:

I will briefly discuss some of the research. I believe Professor Susan Golombok and Dr. Vasanti Jadva will be appearing before the committee in a couple of weeks' time. They have undertaken extensive research and longitudinal studies in this area. I will reference their 2012, 2015 and 2017 studies. They have addressed many of the concerns that psychologists and other mental health professionals might have had. In a longitudinal study, they followed four groups of children: egg donation families; gamete donation families; 42 children born through surrogacy; and a control group. The families were studied when the children were aged one year, two years, three years, seven years, ten years and 14 years. They referred to this as the sixth phase of their longitudinal study.

Their research findings were heartening. At all ages, attachment measures - child-parent relationship measures - supported that children born into any of the assisted reproductive technology, ART, groups rated slightly better on attachment measures than the families in the control group. Part of this good early attachment was put down to the fact that these were very wanted children. The absence of a gestational connection did not interfere with development of positive parent-child relationships. Fathers were slightly less involved at the one year mark in the sperm donation group, but this difference was no longer evident when the children were three years old. In the surrogacy group, there was slight dip in measures of children's psychological adjustment at seven years of age. This was to be expected, as it is at this time that children develop an awareness of the biology of reproduction. At seven years of age, less than 50% in the ART donor groups had told their children about their conception. In the surrogacy group, almost all parents had told their children. At the one year mark, 90% of families were still in contact with surrogate mothers. At ten years, 60% were in touch. The failure to tell children was generally related to parents' fear of othering their children.

The concerns regarding the legal position of children born through surrogacy needs to be addressed urgently. Interestingly, an eminent psychologist in this area - Dr. Mali Mann - made a Freudian slip in a paper she was presenting a number of years ago. In so doing, though, she coined the terms "birth other" and "biological other", clearly defining the social mother as the person with the mothering function. Donors and surrogates had an "other than mothering" function. We urgently need legislation to protect the relationship these children have with their functioning mothers and to afford them all the legal privileges, inheritance rights and so on afforded children who are not born through surrogacy. The State needs to legislate to ensure existing children and all future children have access to their histories and identities. In some extreme situations, access to the history of two donors and one surrogate may be required. The legislation needs to be agile so that future technologies, whatever they may be, can be accommodated.

The preponderance of research in adoption and surrogacy studies points to the value of full disclosure. Children's responses to being told vary from interested and curious to totally disinterested. They are seldom distressed. When children are introduced at a young age to information about their parentage, outcomes are better. Fertility clinics and surrogacy agencies should be required to support parents in introducing age appropriate information about parentage at a very early age. An undertaking to do so should be mandated by these agencies and psychological support should be offered.

Parents' reluctance to disclose to their children has been linked to a lack of education on why and how to do this and fears their children will be marginalised. Changes in legislation can pave the way for inclusion of previously marginalised groups, as we have clearly seen in recent years with progressive legislation regarding gay marriages, divorce etc. Legislation that includes new family formations protects the needs and rights of children and families. Just because people become parents in non-conventional ways does not make them less capable parents. Legislation needs to treat all of our children equally and to offer children born through surrogacy all the privileges offered to children born in more conventional ways. Their choice to trace or not to trace their parentage will be an individual choice, but access to records about their births and-or parentage should be made accessible to them in early adulthood.