Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am happy to take a look at that. Deputy Shortall may be right. If we are broadly agreed that by "clinical pregnancy", we are talking about five weeks - at least that is the advice I have - that is something we can look at. I am making the point that there is no right answer here. It is really around protecting the surrogate. One of the points made to me by some of the advocacy groups, for example, LGBT+ parenting alliance, was that for two men, where it can be really hard to find a surrogate and, let us say, the surrogate already has done one surrogacy and does a second surrogacy which, under this Act, would be her last with them, is there a case for one more to have a sibling, but with the same surrogate, where a close bond has been formed and they do not have the same options as others? That is something we were looking to as well to see is there something to be done there. Where we came down for now was to stick to the two to protect the surrogate. However, I had a lot of sympathy with the point they were making.

I am happy to look at "clinical" and see if that stands up legally and if that is something that we can put in. I take Deputy Shortall's point on very early miscarriage as long as we are satisfied that it does not potentially open the door to coercion of the surrogate.