Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank our guests for taking the time to be with us today. We are grateful they are here.

At the core of the Verona Principles are the rights of the child. In that context, we want to ensure the child knows who he or she is and that the child has that fundamental right to his or her identity and gestational story. Attendant to that is the circumstances surrounding the birth. We must acknowledge that this little person is going to live a lifetime with the story of how he or she came into being.

Already this morning we have heard from Professor Golombok regarding outcomes for children and how they cope with the fact they were born via surrogacy within the domestic arrangements of the UK. The committee heard that the earlier a child is told, the more adjusted he or she is to that fact as part of his or her story. Aligned to that is the concern we have for surrogate mothers. There is a need to ensure they are not exploited. We have also talked this morning about the right of a woman to make decisions. We should not assume based on the country of origin or their socioeconomic background that such mothers do not have the right to make decisions. Last week, we heard from the UN rapporteur that it is all right to compensate for the gestational services as long as that compensation is not contingent upon the surrender of parental rights and the transfer of a child. That is the distinction of sale.

Children in Ireland are extremely disadvantaged by the circumstances of their birth at present. We are proposing a domestic arrangement but we need to address the fact we are a small population. Even with the best domestic arrangement, people still travel internationally for what are legal services abroad. In those other countries, the birth certificates of those babies will in many instances represent the intended parent as opposed to the surrogate mother. The sort of mechanisms we are looking at, and at which academics have looked before us, include some sorts of pre-conception considerations, a threshold for the circumstances around the surrogate mother, the knowledge and awareness of the parents and the commitment to the identity of the child. We are also considering pre-birth arrangements so the child is not left stateless and is not left without a parent who can give consent for medical care once they arrive home in Ireland and before the judicial process is completed here. There would then follow a post-birth transfer of sorts.

Have our guests given consideration to good models? Are we going down the right route? I would welcome our guests' comments on the route we should take.