Ms Justice Bronagh O'Hanlon:

What I would do is keep it simple and have just one authority. As an interim measure, the High Court could be used to regularise surrogacy. If the Act includes a checklist, the High Court could deal with the pre-conception orders. Senator Ruane asked about how to envisage something which does not yet exist. I suggest we think of it like a contract. We have the surrogate mother and the intending parents and surrogacy is an invitation to treat the situation under contract law. The parents are interested in doing a deal with the surrogate mother and that is how it gets realised. We have a pre-conception suite of orders and then we have the post-birth suite of orders. It should be seamless and the High Court could be used to do that because it is international. I would keep the two together and would take out the word altruistic. I have looked at Canadian websites that refer to altruistic surrogacy that would cost about $120,000. Canada is a wonderful country. My sister has been living there for all of her adult life so I am biased. It is a wonderful country with a fantastic constitution. It is also bilingual, interestingly, like Ireland. Reference is made to altruistic surrogacy but there are costs involved. If the regulation is robust enough I would take out the word "altruistic" and just use the terms "international" and "domestic".

My worry about an authority is that most require a lot of money and an awful lot of time to set up. An authority is slow. The courts already have a simple mechanism in place, as is, and that could be expanded. The process should be clean, simple and straight.

I would be very opposed to any system that takes ages to assess the parents. That is the big problem. To get around that, a small number of designated social workers or their equivalent, who could be guardiansad litemor psychologists, dedicated to that work would be needed. Then the situation would be smooth under the chosen Department. Perhaps the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth is the most appropriate.

If the authority route is chosen, it will be a slow process but the committee can take lots of guidance from the work done by the Adoption Authority of Ireland on international adoption.