Ms Tracy O'Keeffe:

As for the challenges that were identified in respect of some of the special rapporteur's recommendations, one related to the recommendation that provision be made for a court application process to take place before a child born through international surrogacy outside of the State be brought back to Ireland. We saw that as creating quite a few practical and logistical difficulties in respect of the arranging of remote hearings. The situation in Ukraine highlights the difficulties that could be involved in trying to arrange a remote court hearing in a foreign jurisdiction. There would also be issues with the timing of such a hearing because the family's visa for whatever country they are in could be running out. They would be running up accommodation and medical care costs while abroad, so prolonging their stay in the country may present practical difficulties. There would be the issues with remote hearings and making sure that whatever reports and so on are needed are before the courts. Trying to procure those at a distance could create practical difficulties.

The other main issue we saw related to the proposal for the process, which would involve a court application only after the birth of the child. That was seen as being inconsistent with what is proposed in the AHR Bill in respect of domestic surrogacy, whereby there would be two stages to the process: an approval process at the outset involving the AHR regulatory authority and then, at the other end, when the child is born, the parental order process that goes to the court. We thought there would be an inconsistency there in that a two-stage process would be required for domestic surrogacy but only one stage would be required for international surrogacy.

Those were two of the main practical issues we saw.