Ms Georgina Roberts:

That is really interesting. I made my statement prior to those of the other two witnesses. I notice that both of them refer to their surrogates as their birth mothers, so I do not want to offend either of them in my comments on language. From my experience of working with all these groups, the overwhelming feedback I have had from surrogates is that they do not want to be considered mothers. They are not mothers in any sense from their perspective. They do not want that, I suspect, for two reasons: first, to protect themselves a little, because if they are referred to from the beginning as mothers, that forms a link and makes things potentially more difficult; and, second, they want to respect the intended mother as the mum and would not want to overstep that mark in making her feel like she has competition for the title of mother. That is why language is really important. I always refer to my surrogate as my surrogate or Suzanne. I would not refer to her as my mother in any sense because she is not. That needs to be reflected in law as well as in the education of people. I have been asked the question Ms Rowley-Smithy mentioned, "Who is your real mum?" You think to yourself, I have only one real mum, only one mum. I have my mum and my surrogate. They are very different people and I love them both for different reasons, but my surrogate is never my mum.

I know we have mentioned birth certificates in forward-facing terms but I am aware that in Ireland there is also a backward-facing problem of people who have already been born through surrogacy, who have birth certificates and who have their surrogates and possibly their surrogates' husbands or their fathers on those certificates, depending on the circumstances. We must not forget this group of people. It is great looking forward to creating laws to help in the future, but people who have been born have an absolute right to have their parents listed on their birth certificates as their legal parents and to have all that put into place in such a way that they are socially and legally secure in their family structures. We need to think of how that can be catered for in a bespoke way, making sure they are also thought of and their journeys are recorded so their futures are as stable and secure as our futures.