Professor Conor O'Mahony:

The risk of not regulating international surrogacy and the violations of children's rights would occur would be that we would continue the scenario we have currently. It is as simple as that. At the moment, we have no laws at all on international surrogacy. If we leave that out of the Bill, we continue the current unsatisfactory situation.

Age and the extension of guardianship is a complicated thing. Guardianship is not something that arises only in the context of surrogacy or donor-assisted human reproduction. If you were to rethink guardianship, it would be a much broader family law reform measure. That is probably not the way to think about it. The way to think about it is about trying to secure parentage as being the model for as many people as possible because parentage is a lifelong status. Guardianship is a different kind of thing. If you were to start reforming guardianship, it is not something that is limited to assisted human reproduction; it is much wider.