Ms Elaine Cohalan:

I will speak to a couple of matters before letting Mr. Kenny Moore in. There were questions about a couple of day-to-day issues and I will cover citizenship. It might seem like an automatic right that every child in Ireland should have but, unfortunately, there are cases where children are born outside the provisions of the Children and Family Relationships Act 2015 and born through surrogacy. For these, citizenship can be a significant difficulty. As it stands, those children born through surrogacy outside the Children and Family Relationships Act 2015 can only claim one parent and citizenship from that parent. They are non-recognised parents if they are from another country or if they are not from Ireland, there can be difficulties with attaining Irish citizenship.

I can start with my own example. My wife is from the US and she is not recognised as the other mother of our daughter, who was born through intracervical insemination. Therefore, she cannot claim any American citizenship entitlements that every other child in that scenario - if it was a heterosexual, cis scenario - would be able to claim, regardless of how the child was conceived. That is because there is a presumption of paternity in Irish law.

There is an example involving surrogacy and a member of the IFTS with whom we worked closely. André is not an Irish citizen and he was the recognised parent of the child he and his wife had through surrogacy. The child could not claim Irish citizenship through his lineage because he is not an Irish citizen. In this case, the child is left stateless. Many issues arise from surrogacy arrangements because the parents or intended parents are not recognised as parents.

There are also issues around travel and the issuing of passports. I can again start with my example and although the birth did not come through surrogacy, it is the same scenario. I had to sign an affidavit when applying for our daughter's passport and agree no other person had any involvement in her raising and parenting her. As one might imagine, many families decide not to get passports for their children and simply do not travel because this is such a difficult, emotional and awful thing to have to sign away the other parent's rights, effectively. There is also fear involved and we certainly had the worry that by signing that document, we could affect any future establishment of that legal relationship. That has an impact when a child has only one parent listed on the birth certificate, only one parent can apply as a parent for a passport, so the child can only travel legally with that parent. The child can only travel with the other parent with the express and written permission of the parent deemed the biological parent.

This creates many issues for us, for example. My wife is from the US and we have lots of family there. Her travelling with our daughter without me is extremely problematic. We have lots of examples in our membership of people having difficulties in airports and at borders for those reasons. Mr. Kenny Moore will speak about some other daily difficulties he has come across.