Kathleen Funchion (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This morning's session has been interesting. The following might be an unfair question to put to Dr. Muldoon. We have discussed regulation and that is best practice, which is what everyone wants to see and that regulation is starting from as early as possible. There is a pre-birth parentage model and there is something similar in Professor Conor O'Mahony's report from 2020, which is invaluable and holds a lot of the key things we need to be doing. Do the witnesses want to comment on that? If they do not want to answer, that is fine. The pre-birth parentage model is the way to go rather than post-parentage because it marks out that surrogacy is another way to parent and is very different from other forms of parentage like adoption. Sometimes people compare or link surrogacy and adoption but they are two very different processes and we need to make that very clear. We have time and I always ask a pre-birth versus post-birth question so why change the habit now a few weeks in?