Ms Tanya Ward:

Inter-country adoption is an excellent example of how this would work in an ideal world, if we were working with another country that had similar approaches. One of the things to think about, when legislating for altruistic domestic surrogacy, we may find more of it happens in Ireland now and not as many commissioning parents need to go internationally. In an ideal world, we would have regulation moving in that direction, where countries sign up to bilateral agreements in which the same legal standards are in place so we can be sure a country is a safer place where a child could be conceived, and there is more guarantee the mother is less likely to be exposed to exploitation, but we are not there yet. That is the challenge.

In the interim, having some basic protections and, as Ms Ahern said, best interest assessments, and maybe through policy trying to discourage people from going to countries where they exploit children and women in surrogacy arrangements, will help to eliminate those kinds of situations. People are very vulnerable and are getting bad advice. There are intermediaries in the middle misadvising them and there is a need for the State to step in and try to intervene to stop that. That is, in essence, what was done with adoption. The State stepped in on adoption and changed the landscape relating to it.