Ms Caoimhe Nic Dhomhnaill:

On the telling of the child, in my clinical practice I approach that by telling him or her that he or she has been co-created, in order that the parents will be supported with their telling of the child. My experience has been that the parents' level of comfort or discomfort with what is disclosed to the child steers what they are going to say. The success of telling a child relates very much to whether the parents have mourned their journey through infertility and are then in a position to deal with the reality of what they need to say to the child. I think we are all agreed the best practice is disclosure and the longitudinal studies point to that.

The disclosure needs to happen in a very age-appropriate way. I heard a story of a little boy in a GP's waiting room recently saying aloud that he had three mothers. It needs to be done in such a way that the child will know where it is appropriate or not appropriate to say it, without stigmatising the surrogacy in any way for the child.

Another issue that often is not considered relates to the fantasies children may have about a surrogate mother, and this is where education and some psychological support is of great benefit. Much work that has been done shows that if a parent, or any idea of a parent, is absent, the fantasies of the child has of that absent other will, invariably, be extreme. They can involve a fantasy of, say, a very benign figure who might come and rescue the child in adolescence when he or she gets into conflict with his or her parents, or they can be malevolent, whereby there can be a fear that the surrogate mother might eventually come and want to kidnap him or her. They are the aspects psychologists can help with. More psychological support needs to be provided to help people with that disclosure to uncover the fantasies a child might have.

Children can also sometimes have a fantasy that his or her mum and dad have gone to a lot of trouble to get the child. That is important because if a child thinks that is the case, whether because they travelled to Ukraine or wherever, that can leak out in the child thinking he or she has to be good. Many of the issues I have seen with children born through surrogacy arriving into the practice have related to how the information has been given to the child.

I agree with the Senator regarding weaponising. The most tragic cases I have seen in family breakdown have been when assisted reproduction has been weaponised in the legal battle and custody. I fully support the legislation to protect the rights of biological and non-biological mothers in surrogacy so that this cannot be weaponised when people separate.