Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

To Deputy Shortall's point, obviously it is her right to press the amendment. What we are trying to do is find the right balance here because there is a concern that providing widespread judicial discretion that can simply supersede any of the requirements and the very important layers of safety we are putting in the Bill to protect the child essentially could provide an avenue for people to say they are going to ignore the Bill, that they are not going to comply with the legal requirements and that they are going to avail of surrogacy outside all or some of the protections that have been legislated for, throw themselves on the mercy of the court and say the child is here now so what is going to be done. We must get the balance right and say that while judges have discretion - they always do - it is important the safeguards in the Bill for the child have very strong standing, and essentially that is what we are trying to do. I fully respect the Deputy's right to press the amendment. I am just saying we are all trying to achieve exactly the same thing here, which is the best protection for the child. What we are proposing here, I believe, finds that balance.

On safeguards for the surrogate, it is not within these amendments, but what I might do is ask the officials to provide the Deputy with a note. We have gone through these in detail and it might come up later. It is a question I posed myself. What is the balance of rights between a surrogate mother and the intending parents? What happens where a woman, in good faith, has entered into a surrogacy, is a surrogate and, halfway through, the intending parents say they have changed their minds and she is on her own? What happens there? Similarly, what if the surrogate says she has given birth to the child, that she has changed her mind, it is her child and she is not following through on the arrangement? It is really tricky and I am not sure if there are any exact and perfectly right answers to any of these things. I think it is about trying to find a process that works as close to all of the time as it can.

Deputy Shortall raised another issue besides the rights of the child and I ask her to please remind me what that was.