Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I find it very hard to understand the Minister's rationale. It is a well-established principle of child welfare that the best interests of the child should be paramount. The vast majority of people would subscribe to that as a primary principle. I cannot see how that could undermine any of the other protections the Minister has referenced. It is an important point and I will be pressing the amendment.

I have another point to make on this section. It is about the criminalisation of non-permitted surrogacy. Some people have argued the current provision is excessively severe. According to the LGBT+ parenting alliance, there are a number or reasons intending parents may engage in non-permitted surrogacy, including habitual residency requirements not being met, which I referenced earlier and will return to on Report Stage, the surrogate using their own egg, the surrogate having not having had a child before and circumstances like that. These are situations where people have not necessarily engaged in non-ethical surrogacy or any form of exploitation; they simply have not complied with every aspect of what is a necessarily restrictive system. I am just raising the question of whether this section could be replaced on Report Stage with one that makes it a criminal offence to engage in unethical surrogacy with evidence of harm, exploitation, undue influence, duress, etc. I ask the Minister to revisit that because it seems particularly onerous and it is not necessarily unethical if a person does not meet one of the requirements. That is the other point I wanted to make about this section. I will be pressing amendment No. 103.