Dr. Brian Tobin:

I will take the two questions. There was one from Senator McGreehan. It was a wonderful, pragmatic question and one I cannot answer today because I am in touch with a colleague in Paris trying to get some accessible information in English about the French adoption procedure with simple adoption. I like what they call it: simple adoption. The average waiting time for a decision is 4.7 months, as noted by the European Court of Human Rights. Hopefully, I can submit information in writing in the weeks ahead as to how that is working in practice.

I appreciate as an academic researcher the arguments in principle against using second-parent adoption as a route to parentage in international surrogacy arrangements. However, putting pragmatism over principle in the case of retrospective recognition of parentage and getting people and children the rights and legal situation they need, I favour a reconsidered type of second-parent adoption, which I hope I have made clear in the briefing document. It strikes me there is no need for second-parent adoption to be the same as joint adoption by strangers. Second-parent adoption throughout Europe always involves a child with a well-established familial bond with the second parent seeking to adopt.

I think I echo some of what Professor Madden was saying when I say I do not think the legislation should go ahead and do what it wants to do in the realm of domestic surrogacy. I think there is a better approach. I have tried as clearly as possible to outline that in the briefing document. I would prefer to see Part 7 deleted because, as Professor O'Mahony said here a couple of weeks ago, the legislation we enact now will regulate this area for a generation. I would rather it did so in a more balanced way. In the UK, the Law Commission, in the report it will publish later this year, will include a stand-alone suggested surrogacy Bill. We should go down a similar route, leaving the 2022 Bill to go ahead and regulate important assisted human reproduction matters and, importantly, set up the assisted human reproduction regulatory authority, AHRRA. I am not talking about a great amount of time, but more time might be needed to get those wanting to forge ahead with a domestic surrogacy regime on board with a pre-conception type of approach to such a regime. For that reason, a stand-alone surrogacy Bill could be excellent and, as was made clear in the submission, the State could fully realise the true potential of the AHRRA in that regard.