Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It would have been okay for Professor O'Mahony to continue given the meeting is emptying out.

In the first round of questions I asked Professor O'Mahony about a sequence of events because, in my mind, they anticipate some of the complex issues that arise. My fear from his response to the issues paper and from his opening statement is that by having the application via a virtual hearing, which is acceptable to me, and where it emerges there are problems with consent or something along those lines, parents find themselves in a situation where the child is refused entry to Ireland. What does that mean? Do the parents need to establish a home in the country in which the baby was born?

I believe it would be much better to have a regime in place that dealt with consent and issues and had some foresight before a pregnancy begins. That would be the preferable safeguard for everybody, including the child who may by citizenship and a genetic link to his or her father have a right to be an Irish citizen but not a right to come to Ireland because of a consent issue. A safer sequence of events would be to have a vetting of the factors that go into a surrogacy agreement within Ireland. I understand we are dealing with a different jurisdiction etc., so there is complexity, but I believe that it would be better to have a checklist.

In 2012, while Alan Shatter was the Minister for Justice, a document was issued that was necessary for the issuing of an emergency travel certificate, and that is what is used. That involves a member of the embassy overseeing the DNA testing in the presence of the surrogate mother and her presence is about assessing whether consent is given and whether there is an understanding. The document is to give an assessment in that meeting. It is a case of us doing it by using the body of knowledge that would arise around that country and perhaps the clinic within that country, because that can vary. I ask Professor O'Mahony to comment on the sequencing of events.