Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I suppose I should get down to business. At the age of seven, children are going through a developmental phase where they have, I believe Professor Golombok used the term, a "sophisticated understanding" with regard to their surrogacy. However, I think at that stage they have a more sophisticated understanding of relationships. That tends to be the phase when they do the “I love you more. No, I love you more.” They have that awareness of the complexity of relationships. Does Professor Golombok recommend to us that, as a committee, we should be making recommendations for counselling supports or anything that could go in at that age to particularly support what is a complex developmental phase anyway, and then you add in the complexity of surrogacy onto that? That is my first question.

In the families formed through surrogacy in Professor Golombok’s group, how reflective were they of an international arrangement? Were they all domestic UK-based surrogate mothers in that? I am wondering about that comparison.