Ms Gillian Keegan:

Yes. Basically, where people are considering opting for surrogacy the bulk of that is foreign based. There have been certain situations where there has been domestic surrogacy but that has probably been very rare over the last ten or 20 years. However, I do not have the numbers and I do not know if anybody else has them.

Regarding the age limit, we are not clinicians. We are just representing the patient voice and we would probably defer to what the clinicians say. I have looked at the position in other countries in Europe and in some countries 50 years of age is applied as the age break in terms of when a woman can have treatment. In the majority of cases it is probably before 47 years of age, but I believe Dr. John Kennedy from Sims IVF said last February that when reviewing files there were 160 cases over a number of years where the women may have been over 47 years of age. Obviously, it is the clinician's viewpoint as to whether that is possible or whether it puts the child or the mother at risk.