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

I will follow on from what Senator Seery Kearney and Deputy Costello said. This might seem like a stupid question, but is there a way of doing some of the best interest assessment before the child is born?

People are arguing that the assessment has to be done after a child is born but then, if we take the example of the seven days, must we then ask is that enough time? This is similar to what Deputy Costello was saying. I do not understand why we could not have a system with a pre-birth assessment. It could include bodily autonomy for the surrogate, which I feel strongly about. When the baby is born, parentage would transfer over. I can understand the sense of having some sort of built-in cooling off time.

If a legal guardian were to appointed, who would it be? We could be getting into a potentially messy situation in that regard. A parent might make a different decision than a legal guardian. If the child is very premature, there are many different things to consider. Is there a way of combining those elements around the best interests of the child and having doing some of the assessment beforehand? I acknowledge this could be a stupid question but does the baby have to physically be there before that kind of an assessment can be carried out or can some of it be done with a built-in clause that states if something goes wrong within ten, 20 or 30 days, parentage can be revoked or something like that? Legal certainty is obviously in the best interests of a child.

Going back to the birth certificate situation, I feel we are getting into strange territory if a number of people are named on a birth certificate. That is definitely going to have the effect of drawing a red circle around the name of the child and marking him or her out as different. Is there a way of having a register of that information that is very accessible and even from a younger age. People might not even have to be 18. Perhaps from the age of 16, people would be able to access all of their information but it does not have to be included on the birth certificate. I am thinking how complicated the situation is with regard to passports at the moment, as we all appreciate. I cannot imagine what it would be like if there are multiple people mentioned on a birth certificate. Such a child would be treated differently. He or she would be the subject of discrimination and would also face longer processes as a result. I appreciate our guests might not have answers to all those points. I am thinking out loud.