Ms Sarah Groarke:

I thank the Senator for her questions. I refer back to the European Court of Human Rights judgment which I mentioned. As we know, the court judgment in Mennesson v.France and the court's later advisory opinion provided that domestic law must provide a possibility of recognition of the legal relationship between a child born through surrogacy abroad and the intending parent. That, interestingly, is framed within Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right of the child to private life. That means the child's relationship with his or her parents is viewed as an inherent part of his or her identity. That is the point I wanted to make on the European Court of Human Rights.

The Senator briefly referred to children being left stateless and we are concerned by the risk that, though the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child provides that children should have a nationality and that this should not be affected by the method of the child's birth and where he or she is born, in the case of international surrogacy, there is a risk a child will be unable to receive the nationality of his or her intending parents and that he or she will remain stateless for some time. I want to reiterate that, in our observations, both the UN special rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children and the Verona principles which the Senator referred to are clear that the state of the intending parents is responsible for ensuring statelessness does not occur and for providing the necessary assistance to ensure the child obtains the nationality of the intending parents promptly and after the child's birth.