Ms Jeannette Woellenstein:

This is a very good question. We have had continuous reflections on whether there would be a need to develop further complementary guidance. We have the principles, but would there be a need to go into implementation handbooks or guides that also provide more detail on promising practices that exist in certain country contexts? This is a constant reflection we have had throughout the drafting process and that we keep on having.

The starting point would be to go through the principles, which I guess many committee members have already done, and maybe identify the concerning areas, for instance, if this would be feasible with the current national legislation or not and what would be needed in terms of changes to be introduced. On many aspects, the principles are operational. They talk about procedural safeguards. They talk about competent authorities. Would it be feasible to introduce a focal point, an authority, that is responsible for surrogacy matters, that has some prerogatives with regard to monitoring and that could be also the focal point to collaborate with other legislation. At the beginning, a committee member mentioned that the State is being faced with Irish nationals who still go abroad and come back with a child. The principles have some good implementation points that the committee can work with but, of course, with additional resources, we would be able to develop much more guidance and go a little further on how to implement concretely the principles.

I am not sure I responded to the Deputy's question.