Professor Conor O'Mahony:

On the birth certificate and exactly what goes on it, my report recommended there are a number of potential knock-on implications around the question of the exact relationship between the birth certificate and whatever register is created to facilitate the right to identity. There are different possibilities with respect to what exactly you put on the birth certificate and what you keep on the separate register. There are complications that arise from each of those various reports so the recommendation in my report was there needed to be a further and more detailed piece of work done about the implications for the system of registration of births in order to work out the most appropriate model. What I am very clear on is the identity of the surrogate absolutely needs to be recorded. That needs to be available to the child. My recommendation was it should be available to the child from birth and not only at a particular age.

Whether the identity of the surrogate is recorded on the birth certificate itself or in a separate register is quite a technical and complicated question on which further work needs to be done that goes beyond the scope of the report I produced.