Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As a follow on to that and in the domestic context, we need to be assured or to give consideration to the fact that that Irish-born child by surrogacy will use that document for an application to school as birth certificates are produced for many things. While these children have a right, absolutely, to their identity and to their gestational origins, and nobody is disputing that we need a mechanism that preserves that, they also have a right when presenting themselves to keep that information private. A birth certificate that mandates or obliges a surrogate mother, and a donor perhaps, to be named on the certificates, as has been suggested on this committee by one of our members, undermines that right to privacy for that individual. When the person goes to get married he or she will have to produce a birth certificate at that stage as an adult and at that point he or she may not wish to go into that detail with the registrar, or whatever, but that does not mean that the person is not fully cognisant of all of the information.