Professor Conor O'Mahony:

That is a good question. Dr. Bracken might also want to respond to it. Domestic and international surrogacy give rise to different considerations and different risks arise. Ideally, what one would want to create is a pathway that gets people to the same place, which is full recognition of family relationships, full parentage for the intending parents and full protection for the right to identity wherever that is possible. One would want to get them to the same place, whether it is a domestic or international framework. There are different issues and risks that arise in the international framework relative to a domestic framework. It is more complicated and there are more moving parts. Suddenly there would be issues around the interaction between Irish law and the law of another state, issues around what rules are in place in that other state governing payments, for example, to the surrogate mother and various other considerations like that. It is probably not as simple as just taking exactly the same process that one might operate in a domestic context and saying that could work perfectly for international cases as well because it is a different process. The recommendations in my report were aimed at trying to get people to the same place but adding in some additional steps that would provide those additional safeguards that one would need to deal with those extra considerations and risks I mentioned but also providing some degree of a safety net. Some of our existing laws on donor-assisted human reproduction provide for a situation where there is a pathway and if one stays on it one would get everything but if one deviates from it one would get nothing. Part of what I was trying to achieve in the report recommendations was to set out our ideal pathway where one would get everything and everybody's rights are protected but also providing for a situation where some people, for whatever reason, deviate slightly from that pathway and it would not be a case of saying that person does not qualify for parentage and we would not give that person any recognition whatsoever. The child has already been born and that appears to be a disproportionate response in the event that somebody has deviated slightly. The recommendations in the report were about stating here is where we want to get the person, here is best practice and we will try to funnel cases this way, but here also is a safety net potentially of guardianship rather parentage, for example, for cases where people have not ticked all the boxes but the court is still satisfied that is the best outcome for the child.