Mr. Gearóid Kenny Moore:

I will take the question on the surrogate and the desire of the surrogate to maintain an ongoing relationship with the family. I will give my own personal experience. As I mentioned, we started our surrogacy journey in Canada. We had an amazing surrogate who tried to support us in conceiving a child or children for us. It did not work out. She continued to try to help other families and did have surrogate children with them. Her preference was to have an ongoing relationship with the family, as in to understand the various milestones that would be achieved, such as going to crèche, school etc.

In the case of the surrogate who supported us to have our three children, she is, as I mentioned, a personal friend. She was a gestation surrogate, meaning she had no biological link to our children. In fact, she was of a completely different race and colour to our three white, pasty Irish babies but when they were born she held them in the hospital. She stayed in the hospital with us while her postnatal care was being looked after. She has frequently visited us here in Ireland. She feels absolutely connected to our family but absolutely no connection to our children from a biological or maternal perspective. She would always say her relationship is primarily with me as her friend and my husband as my husband and that her relationship with the children is entirely distinct and separate from that. That is just anecdotal evidence from our perspective.

I participate in many forums for intended parents and people within the surrogacy community. My general impression is the majority of surrogates I have heard from who speak within those forums will say they want to have some sort of connection to the family post birth. The level of that connection will vary according to circumstances like how busy everybody is, time zones, locations, language etc. My understanding is that typically surrogates want some sort of connection to the family they have helped and the children they have conceived.

With respect to official advocacy groups for either surrogates or the children conceived through surrogates, I do not believe there are groups available. I am certainly not aware of them. There are informal groups where surrogates communicate with each other, where surrogates communicate with surrogates and the intended parents, and there are probably such groups for children who have been conceived through surrogates. However, I am not aware of any actual advocate groups that exist. I hope that gives the Deputy some insight and useful information.